


introspect

by skylights



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dramatics, Dreamscapes, M/M, poor man's Inception!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylights/pseuds/skylights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles has run this con before. The long con, Hank likes to call it, even though Charles still sometimes tries to think of con as being the shortened form of <i>confession</i>. After all, isn’t truth one of the most solid bases to build a lie on? Because there is always some semblance of truth here, in the tangents and fragments, Charles never straying too far from the set narrative. </p><p>This is a dream. This is a choice. This is you, with your memories weighing you down. </p><p>("So tell me, Charles." There's a newfound determination in Erik's gaze when he turns towards to Charles, a sharpness there that Charles had only seen shadows of beforehand. "Tell me how you're going to wake me up.")</p><p>Or: Charles is in the dirty, dirty business of dealing with dreams, and Erik is a dreamer he can't leave behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Done for X-Men Reverse Bang 2015! Thank you so much to luna2k for the lovely, lovely art which you can view [here](http://luna2k.livejournal.com/10827.html), and for being infinitely patient with me ;A; I really hope this is to your liking!
> 
> Also, massive shoutouts to [SomewhereBelowZero](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereBelowZero/pseuds/SomewhereBelowZero) and Sam for the emergency beta services, you guys are the _best_ , idek why ya'll even put up with me <3

 

It’s calm, here. Unspeakably, maybe even irrationally so, perhaps, but he’ll take what he can get and ask no questions because this feels like the first time in forever that he hasn’t been looking over his shoulder, hasn’t been running and running and–  
  
“Aiden?”  
  
“Sorry,” he sighs, and some of the tension he’d been holding in his shoulders dissipates, back going from ramrod straight to a looser, easier-held slouch. “It’s just...it's been a while, y’know?”  
  
“Of course. Take your time.”  
  
They’re cloistered in the quietest corner of the cafe and there really isn’t a reason to be afraid of anything here, the two of them tucked away safe and unheeded by the other scattered pockets of small talk. Charles has been nothing but kindness itself, almost unbearably patient with his tangents and propensity for idling, so why–

“You were telling me about your brothers, weren’t you?” comes the gentle prompt and whatever fears, unfounded and irrational as they are, wilt away a little more. “Michael and Daniel?”  
  
“Yeah. Danny, especially. He’s a good lad, he is. Damned good head on his shoulders.”  
  
“That’s wonderful. And Michael? How’s he like?”  
  
The dark, heady scent of coffee is wafting through the air, underscored by the warmer, more homely notes of hot milk being frothed, and for a moment, he can’t help but think of Mikey all those years ago, gangly-limbed at thirteen and standing at the stove, heating up the last of the milk in their decrepit little council flat. Danny's stick thin ankles play-kicking at his under the kitchen table.  
  
“He's..." A long moment of hesitation that Charles politely doesn’t comment on, the other man simply curling his hands around his mug of long-gone-lukewarm tea as he waits. “We grew up alright, together," he finally settles on. "Best older brother a kid could ever ask for.”  
  
“You followed him down to Clarkenwell?”  
  
“He didn’t really want me going with him, but what’s a lad of sixteen to do when your brother’s suddenly pulling in more money a week than you’ve seen all your life?" A bitter edge has slipped into his voice and even though he notices, it's not like he can take it back now. Those lean, hungry years are nothing compared to '98 in New York, but boyhood has sharpened the memory to a blade-point, growing pangs magnified into starvation.  
  
"You don’t just sit back on your haunches and go _well, that’s all nice and good, thanks for the extra fifty quid_ , innit?”  
  
Charles makes an agreeing sound, oddly understanding even though he looks like he’s never been in want for anything in his entire, probably-coddled life.  
  
“We looked out for each other, down there,” he adds despite himself. In any other scenario, Charles’ polished, public school accent alone would have clammed him up from the start, but...it’s Charles. Understanding without the embarrassing burden of sympathy. Quiet, yet responsive in his listening. He can’t remember the last time he’s spoken like this to anyone other than Danny, and Danny hasn’t returned his calls for years now.  
  
“Not the easiest place, obviously," he continues on. "Not the easiest people either. But we managed, the two of us. Did good for ourselves.”  
  
“You still keep in touch with Michael, then?”  
  
That strange feeling from before is pricking along the back of his neck again. Not potent enough for fear and not even quite unsettling enough for apprehension, but more like...having someone's gaze between your shoulder blades while in line, or being in a too-quiet place with not enough people, each watching the other.  
  
"I do, yeah. Now and again. More than I ever will with Danny, at any rate."  
  
Something that looks a lot like sadness and feels more like pained understanding flashes across Charles eyes, here one moment, gone the next.  
  
"I'm sorry to hear about Daniel," Charles says quietly in its wake and it's sincere, the way he says it. As if Charles knows exactly what he's speaking of, when he talks about loss.  
  
"Like I said before--," He shrugs, a careless movement that does nothing to hide the strain, "--he's got a good head on his shoulders. Knows when and how to cut loose." A smile then, as if Charles has jostled loose some forgotten memory. "Doing well for himself now, Danny is. Wife and kids and everything, the whole package."  
  
"And Michael..."  
  
Now here’s the thing: Mikey had made him _swear_ , _swear it for me, you’ll not breathe a word, don’t tell anything to anyone who’s not blood, you hear me?_ but he thinks of the too-quiet confines of weekly supervised visits, of standing in line at the shops with Danny's hand in his when they were young, Mikey's careful eye on the both of them, and-  
  
"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it, Aiden. We don't have to do this now."  
  
And Charles. Too understanding by half, too good to be true. How _did_ he even come to know Charles, with his quiet manners and sad, knowing eyes? When did they get here? How, for that matter?  
  
"No, it's alright," he says at length. "This isn't even real anyways, yeah? You're not real. This whole thing's a sham. Just one giant dream."  
  
Charles has allowed himself a small smile that gets taken as confirmation, the rest of the cafe filling in the silence between them with background murmurings, the occasional hiss of the espresso machine. At least the coffee still tastes real, smooth and bitter in his mouth. It’s the good stuff, this is.  
  
"If I tell you about Mike," he says as he sets his mug down carefully. "If I tell you what you want to know, I'll have to wake up, correct?"  
  
"Like you said before, this is a dream."  
  
"And if I don't want to? Wake up, that is."  
  
Charles' smile doesn't falter, even if it does take on the slightest sheen of insincerity. The fact that this is the first sign of it that he's seen all this time is comforting, to say the least, and there’s an inexplicable air of finality settling into the spaces.

Charles is still smiling.  
  
"I'm sure something can be arranged."

* * *

  
Topside, Hank's face snaps into sharp focus the moment Charles wakes, a curious mix of anger and concern and everything in between. Anger seems to be the dominant emotion though, and Charles wisely bites his tongue for the time being, choosing to instead lend his attention to sitting up and straightening the invisible creases in his clothes.  
  
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," Hank hisses under his breath as he leans in close to check Charles over. Pulse rate, slightly elevated. Breathing, just a little short. "I can’t keep covering for you. You know that. You fucking know that.”  
  
His hands are shaking as they always do after an encounter like this and Charles fumbles a little with his shirt cuffs after he’s yanked his sleeves back down, Hank looking as if he’s on the verge of offering an unwelcome comment.  
  
“You need to stop,” he says, when he finally gives in. “Charles. You can’t just–”  
  
“And you’d rather I what, then?” Charles keeps his voice low, even if the words come out sharp. He’s not one to be snappish. Likes to think, instead, that he’s more inclined than most to keep his cool under particularly bad circumstances, but god, he’s tired, he’s just so tired and run ragged to the bone, and his hands won’t fucking stop _shaking_ even though he should be in better control than this. “Would you prefer that I just send him on to the likes of Research? Is that it?”  
  
Finally, the buttons on one sleeve deign to cooperate and Charles just sits there for a while, hands clenched into fists on his thighs. Head bowed as well, so he won’t have to look Hank in the eye, or at Aiden, lying unmoving on the next bed.  
  
“At the start of all this–,” Hank says after Charles finds it in himself to look up again, “–you said you didn’t want blood on your hands.” Because Hank is Hank, there’s no real accusation in the words, no actual condemnation. Charles forces himself to look at Aiden’s body all the same, though. A penance of sorts. The kind that makes his stomach churn and muscles feel strung out, stretched too thin.  
  
“They’re dirty either way, remember? Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. At least this way, he gets to go with some dignity still intact.” Charles has shifted his attention to his remaining sleeve with a concentration that's far too intense for one simple task. "We've had this argument, Hank."  
  
Declining to answer, Hank has moved on to Aiden by now, where he makes a slow show of taking blood samples and writing things down in his clipboard, slipping IV lines out of skin. Later, he’ll have to file a report that no one will read, claiming yet another accidental death. Another mark of negligence on his part, if he doesn’t phrase it right.  
  
Maybe this time, the sedatives reacted wrongly. Maybe there were allergies they missed. Or maybe, Charles just made a rare mistake in there and took more than he should have, triggered something he couldn’t stop. Either way, Intelligence will have what they were looking for and Research, in turn, will just have to work without their promised share for now. God knows they’ll have someone to fill that space soon enough anyways.  
  
“Did you get what they were looking for, at least?” Hank asks over the sound of his pen scratching on the forms he had started to fill out.  
  
“Enough.” Buttoned up and passably presentable, Charles is just starting to slip his feet back into his shoes. “Emma should already be upstairs, and you know how she is with being made to wait.”  
  
Hank makes an understanding sound and Charles looks away as he pulls a sheet over Aiden.

 _I’m sorry,_ Charles lets slip into the corner of Hank’s thoughts just as he leaves, no more than the barest hint of a whisper and to Hank’s credit, the other man barely flinches, too used to Charles' presence by now. _I keep asking you for so much, but...he still has family in Manchester. A brother, Daniel, so–_

 _I’ll see what I can do_ , comes the weary reply and then Charles is too far away to hear anything else.

* * *

  
Emma, of course, is already waiting by the time Charles lets himself into the empty meeting room at the end of the hall, three floors up from where the interrogation areas are. They’ve appropriated numerous rooms over the past few years, and yet she always seems to gravitate back towards this one, with its drab grey fittings and white-paint walls.  
  
“Frost,” Charles says by means of greeting as he sits at the very edge of the table. It’s more common courtesy than anything, the both more than aware of the other whenever they’re in the same building, but at least it lends some pretence of normalcy, however temporary it may be.  
  
“Charles. I just heard from the good doctor that our subject is...”  
  
“Dead, yes,” he says bluntly. “An unanticipated complication occurred, during the interrogation. My apologies.”  
  
“I’m sure Research will be more sorry for it than you are, but such is our line of work. You have the information all the same, I presume?”  
  
“Would I be sitting here so soon if I didn’t?”  
  
Emma raises one perfectly trimmed eyebrow, more in cool judgement than surprise. “Prickly today, aren’t we?”  
  
“If you’ll forgive my attitude, Frost, I just spent six hours wallowing through that man’s mind, the last few minutes of which involved having to feel him _die_ , so yes, prickly is a bit of an understatement. Do you want your information now or are we to continue sitting here discussing my clearly unpleasant demeanour?”  
  
The room feels closer than before, the air a little thinner in his lungs, and it’s almost belatedly that Charles realises that it might not have been a wise choice to leave the interrogation area so soon, with Aiden’s body not even yet cooling under the sheets. Some handovers are easier than others, but with the kind of schedule Intelligence demands, Charles counts it a blessing if he has ten minutes between waking and reporting.  
  
“We can begin,” Emma says after a beat. He knows that her gaze is lingering on him, feels it keenly and yet, ignores it all the same. Her assessments are nothing new. “Whenever you’re ready, Charles.”  
  
He takes a steadying breath, and starts to speak.

* * *

  
In theory, the cold plunge of reality should be instant for a telepath like him. Real life separated from dreaming like a gasp of fresh air after being underwater, a riot of colours and sounds and thoughts.  
  
Charles discovers very soon that practice says otherwise.  
  
Practice says Charles spends the long commute home staring at his hands, the pale skin stretched thin over his knuckles when he clenches his fists, unclenches them in the fluorescent lighting of the subway.  
  
Practice says Charles doesn’t dare to look up from them because he sees ghosts whenever the lights flicker– the nameless first prisoner they had brought him, clawing his own eyes out because they hadn’t known back then, couldn’t have anticipated that an intrusion so great would result in this.  
  
The blurred shape of Emma standing over him, drawling _Darling do stop struggling, you're only making this difficult_ in his head as other, stronger hands hold him down, someone sliding the first needle into his arm.

Practice says that Charles understands, intimately so these days, why sometimes it's better to just keep dreaming.

* * *

  
It's a rare occurrence, that Charles finds himself in a mind already in the midst of building a dream. The sedatives that Hank procures for his use often leaves minds a blank slate, the bleakest of construction spaces for Charles to start building from whatever strands of memories he can pull. A childhood house, most often. The kind of nondescript cafe common to most cities, only with better coffee because Charles still has it in himself to believe in the smallest of indulgences. Quiet, peaceful places, all of them, and Charles usually knows these are interrogations only in name, confessionals in nature.

In Erik Lehnsherr's mind though, it storms throughout the city. Charles opens his eyes to rain sleeting down at impossible angles and soaking him to the skin, the damp and cold already starting to claw their way into his bones. Squat, grey buildings, one indistinguishable from the next, peer down at him almost accusingly, as if the architecture itself recognises him as an unbelonging. No matter. Charles has been in his fair share of unwelcoming minds before and Lehnsherr's will unlikely be the last, even if it does promise to possibly be the wettest.  
  
Shoes squelching uncomfortably, Charles presses on. The streets here have the never ending quality of a restrained nightmare, too straight and too uniform to be anything but unreal. Steel lamps, as evenly placed as they are, shine only the bare minimum amount of watery light and Charles navigates by these, turning wherever the lights shine brightest.  
  
By the seventh identical stretch of road, Charles has to wonder whether he should just give up, or if he's accidentally wandered into something thoroughly unsalvageable. It's been miserable work so far, and by now, Charles doesn't trust himself to have the amount of patience or delicacy usually required for the bulk of his duties, but then of course, that's the exact moment the street shifts into an abrupt dead end, Charles left contemplating his options in front of the only seemingly-inhabited building in this entire sodden place.  
  
On one hand, Charles hasn't even met Lehnsherr and he's already exhausted, Lehnsherr's mind giving him no real amount of agency in terms of warmth or dryness. On the other, Lehnsherr could be just a few metres and a few flights of stairs away, and the faster Charles gets whatever it is that Intelligence wants from him, the faster this weekend can come to a close.  
  
The window with the faint light on the second floor beckons, not warm enough to be inviting but still indicative enough of Lehnsherr's possible presence. Rain, cold and biting, has soaked him to the skin.  
  
"Fuck it," Charles mutters, and pushes his way indoors.

* * *

  
It's drier inside, if still just as cold. Charles fumbles his way through the half dark of the entry hall and gropes his way up the initial flight of stairs, the first floor just a dusty corridor of locked doors and tightly shut windows, rain rattling the glass.

Because this is a dream and Lehnsherr's one at that, the climb up to the second floor seems to take infinitely longer, Charles clinging to the bannisters until it takes all of his hard-won discipline to just put one foot in front of the other, gaining a step nowhere. Between the uncomplicated roads and light in the window, it's almost as if Lehnsherr doesn't care about broadcasting his whereabouts, probably knowing full well that his location in itself is already the best deterrent he can have.  
  
How long has it been by now, since he first set foot into Lehnsherr's head? Two hours? Three? Time is elusive here, stretching and contracting in ways that Charles himself can't even understand when he builds his own dreams, but even if the minutes aren't real, the ache in his muscles is tangible enough, joints of his knees protesting even as he forces himself up another step.  
  
There's a steady burn in his lungs by the time he stands in front of what he presumes to be Lehnsherr's apartment. Light, brighter now after his long climb in the dark, spills out onto the floorboards from under the door and Charles stands just shy of it for a few moments, catching his breath.  
  
He's had hours to think about how he'll find Lehnsherr. Cycled through trepidation and anxiety, lingered a long while on curiosity, but now faced with the man himself just beyond the door, Charles...is just tired. Cold, too, even though the climb has dried his clothes and left him just the wrong side of damp. On instinct he raises a fist to rap against the door, only to stop short.  
  
Should he knock? Light is lapping at the front of his shoes, reaching out from the unseen cracks in the door. Charles is in the midst of lowering his hand, still contemplating, but it's with a sharp abruptness that the door is pulled violently open from the inside and Charles suddenly finds that he's standing face to face with Erik Lehnsherr, staring down the muzzle of a gun.

* * *

  
"Wait," Charles says quickly, hands already up and palms shown outwards in clear surrender. "Wait, I'm not-"  
  
Lehnsherr gives him an appraising look and for the first time, Charles is thankful for his bedraggledness. With his hair having dried into wild, fluffy clumps and rain-soaked clothes looking no better, Charles thinks he hardly looks like the sort of threat Lehnsherr had been expecting, and sure enough, the gun does fall away in time, even if the wariness in Lehnsherr's eyes doesn't leave.  
  
"You shouldn't be here," Lehnsherr says says curtly. With that, he turns and disappears back into the apartment, leaving Charles outside to either cool his heels or follow him in. Midway through the hallway, Lehnsherr pauses to throw Charles an impatient look over his shoulder.  
  
"Well?" he demands.  
  
Follow Lehnsherr in it is, then.

* * *

  
Lehnsherr leads him past what feels like an impossible number of closed doors, the entryway eventually widening to spit them out into a large, open space. The few lamps scattered seemingly at random splutter light onto the walls and Charles notes how Lehnsherr has stripped his living space of everything but the barest essentials. No photos. No trinkets. No hint of personality whatsoever.  
  
Instead, what Lehnsherr has is this: Tall, wraith-thin floor lamps, metal from head to toe. An electric heater blowing infrequent gusts of warmish air against their ankles. A mattress in the corner, heaped with an assortment of blankets and a stray book or two.  
  
It’s in continued silence that Lehnsherr strides over to the assembled pile and plucks a dull, moss-coloured one from the top, mutely handing it to Charles who murmurs his thanks.  
  
A thoroughly bizarre picture they would make at the moment, Charles thinks to himself as he drapes the blanket over his shoulders and draws it close as a makeshift cloak of sorts. Himself, wrapped up and trailing worn, green fabric on the floorboards. Lehnsherr, just over an arm’s length away, watching him like a hawk. As beginnings go, Charles isn’t sure if he’s had stranger ones at this point.  
  
“I’m Charles,” he offers in time and Lehnsherr makes no sign of being put at ease by Charles’ friendly overture. If anything, his expression grows more shuttered, the muscles in his jaw tightening.  
  
“I know,” comes the cautious reply. “You’re Charles Xavier, aren’t you? I know who you are and what you’ve been doing. What I don’t know is _why_ you’re here, when you shouldn’t be.”  
  
Taken aback, Charles forces himself to loosen the death grip he’s suddenly forced onto the edges of his blanket.

Lehnsherr had been sedated from the moment they brought him in. Too dangerous, said his file. Prone to violent outbursts of anger. Mutant, even if his precise powers remained unclear and their classification, even more vague. Telekinesis, perhaps? That was the first thing that Charles was supposed to find out, but it would appear that Lehnsherr already had him at a disadvantage here.  
  
“Don’t look so surprised,” Lehnsherr continues on bluntly. “You’re not exactly a household name, but I’ve read your work.” Almost a little wryly, Lehnsherr lets slip the the barest hint of a smile, if the quirk at the corner of his lips can be called that. “And I prefer to put faces to my names.”  
  
It’s almost as if someone had taken away all the air in the room and replaced it a few seconds later, Charles’ shoulders sagging a little with the relief. His academic work. Lehnsherr knew him through his academic work, of course.  
  
“You had best supplement what you’re reading with newer material, then. I haven’t published in years.”  
  
A shrug from Lehnsherr’s side, the action curiously casual when put in contrast with the rest of his otherwise severe attitude.  
  
“That takes nothing away from what you’ve already proved. The X gene's presence, its subsequent application to the study of genetic heritage.” Lehnsherr inclines his head in what Charles supposes could be acknowledgement, or even gratitude. “We know what to expect now. What we will have to face in the future.”  
  
“There hasn’t been enough substantial research to back up the claims I’ve made, it would be a bit–” It’s with effort that Charles bites back on the remains of the argument he’d been meaning to make, swallowing down the words even though speaking about his work still sends a thrill down his spine. “No, I apologise. I shouldn’t be arguing mutant politics with you when I barely even know your name yet, even if I already appear to have appropriated one of your blankets.”  
  
For the first time since their meeting, Lehnsherr looks...unsure. As if he has a ready answer on the tip of his tongue, but doesn’t know if he wants to commit to it.  
  
“Erik,” he finally says. “Erik Lehnsherr. And it’s not appropriating when I gave it to you.”  
  
Charles has no argument to this, quietly sitting on the chair that Lehnsherr gestures him towards while Lehnsherr takes his place on the edge of the mattress.  
  
“You must know that I respect your work a great deal, Dr. Xavier, and your abilities as well,” he begins and Charles, now both warm and sitting for the first time in hours, has to grasp for the remains of his alertness to follow the trajectory of Lehnsherr’s gun. Back of his waistband to right hand. Right hand to bed, nestled in the fold of a sheet, next to where his legs are stretched out to the floor.  
  
“Just Charles, please. I haven’t done enough to deserve that title in a long while.”  
  
“Charles, then. You must understand, that your presence is...not unwelcome here, even if it’s unexpected, but I still need to know.” Lehnsherr’s hands are still far too near his gun, but Charles is too fixated on the slow change in Lehnsherr’s face to pay it the attention it deserves. If Lehnsherr had been closed off earlier, he merely looks weary now, as if a delayed exhaustion has stripped his defences to the bone.  
  
“I'm dead, Charles. What are you doing down here?"


	2. Chapter 2

“He thinks he’s dead," Hank echoes flatly and Charles just nods, still perched on the edge of his bed to watch the slow rise and fall of Lehnsherr's chest. Awake again, it's hard to reconcile the bruised, battered man lying in front of him with the one he had just spoken to. Hard as well, to match the leader of a mutant terrorist cell to someone who had shared his blankets with Charles.  
  
"I don't know what they did to him before they brought him here, but whatever it is..." Charles trails off, the sentence ending prematurely with a sigh. It's not like they don't know what happens here, or what they contribute to, but Lehnsherr is the first one that Charles has seen bearing such...drastic effects.  
  
"You've seen his medical file," Hank's says quietly when Charles makes no move to pick up where he had left off. "It looks a lot worse than it actually is; there's been no internal bleeding or-..."  
  
"Intelligence can be creative when it comes to these kinds of things."  
  
"Of course."  
  
The heavy silence falls between them again, Charles fidgeting a little with a bit of the scratchy paper bed sheet between his fingers. It's been a while since he's come to Emma empty handed, which hopefully will carry some weight with the situation he's in now. He's been forced to skip doses before, and even as unpleasant as the muffledness, the prolonged silences can be, Charles is confident he'll live.  
  
"I'm going to give Frost the news," Charles finally announces, pushing himself off the bed and standing on shaky feet. The disconnect between walking for hours in his mind and having actually been lying down for most of the day is always a strange one. "You won't be easing him off the sedation anytime soon, will you?"  
  
"He's going to be out until we get what we need, basically." Hank taps at a line in Lehnsherr's file with a forefinger, looking as uncomfortable with the order as Charles feels about it. "Induced coma if it even comes to that. Written down right here."  
  
Charles steals another look at Lehnsherr, gaunt and pale on his own sheets. Having seen Lehnsherr's bright eyes and half smiles, how terribly strange it is now, to see him lying so still.  
  
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he says, and doesn't allow himself to think too much about why.  
  


* * *

  
Emma is as intrigued as Charles thought she would be, warier than he expected.

“It’ll take time,” he’s saying as she flips through Lehnsherr’s medical, one nail tapping idly on the table as she does. “Maybe even a lot more than we’re used to.”

“Active resistance?”

“Passive, if you’ll believe it. He wasn’t violent or anything, but if I go in for five hours, four will most probably be spent trying to find him, and you know I’m no use after that time frame.”

They had tried, in the early days. Six, seven, even ten hour long stretches that left Charles vomiting from the nausea and exhaustion while Hank frantically tried to stop their subjects from hemorrhaging to death, the strain of two consciousnesses just too much for one mind to bear for so long, no matter how careful Charles tried to be. Intelligence is a little more gracious now with time, if only for Charles’ benefit more than anything.

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that his mind is...protecting him, in some way.”

“It’s not unheard of, even more so if he’s a mutant. I don’t know how he’s doing it, exactly, but if he’s a telekinetic of some sort, it might be more of an immune system-esque response rather than a conscious shielding.”

Emma’s finger taps on, even as she doesn’t even deign to look up from the last page of Lehnsherr’s report.  “There’s a lot of uncertainty I’m hearing from your part, Charles,” she says casually, though Charles knows by now that everything Emma does is anything but. “If. Might. Don’t know." 

“Then you can take your selective hearing to Management and see what else they’d rather do, short of turning him into a vegetable in the process," Charles snaps back despite knowing better. "You’ve seen his file. If the usual methods worked, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“Unfortunate, but true.” The tapping has come to a standstill and Emma flicks the file shut, finally looking up as she does. “I’ll have Hank increase the sedation and if-” She smirks here, if the small, utterly humourless twist at the side of her mouth can be even called that, “-you manage to find something more substantial than whatever you have now, then we’ll bring the issue of time back to the table again. Dismissed, Charles. You’ll be contacted the usual way.”  


* * *

  
If a list had to be made of Intelligence's remarkably few redeeming qualities, efficiency would be one of the first few traits at the top. By midweek, just as Charles is starting to get the first few headaches from all the muffled voices, the package arrives.  
  
It's sitting on his kitchen table when he comes home on a dull Wednesday evening. Small, unobtrusive. Barely the size of an average postcard and wrapped in brown paper with specks of rain still drying on the top, Charles barely even glancing around the small confines of his apartment before he tears into the package.  
  
Earlier on in their arrangement, he had wondered. Been, in turns, afraid and angry, suspicious of even the smallest shadows in every corner. It has always been one thing to have a working knowledge of the resources available at Intelligence's disposable and quite another to be at the receiving end of them. Whoever it is they send on these errands, Charles has never had the displeasure of meeting, and now, Charles couldn't care less about how he gets his dosages, just as long as he gets them.  
  
The first plunge of the syringe past his skin and into his bloodstream stings something awful. A sharp intake of breath. What if–

And then, the first few hints of clarity amidst the haze.

Blessed, blessed clarity.  


* * *

  
As it is with everything else that they do, it’s a fine line that they walk when it comes to sedation. Too little and anything could suddenly become a hair-trigger for panic, the mind just aware enough to work itself into a terrified frenzy when it inevitably perceived Charles’ presence as a threat. Too much, however, and brain function had the tendency to turn sluggish to the point of unresponsiveness, contact made impossible when time crawled and stretched in ways that even Charles couldn't keep hold on.

Hank seems to have found a happy balance though this time around, and even if it doesn’t stop Erik form having already built his own dream, at least it’s considerably drier this time, if not still a little cold. While Erik’s empty streets and duplicate-houses had been bleak before, the side of the small, grassy hill that Charles stands on now is desolate in an entirely different way, wild and untamed, and all the more lonely for it.

“Erik?”

No answer, save for the sound of waves crashing on some invisible shore, coming from not too far away. Charles sighs and wraps his arms around himself for whatever little warmth he can get. Another search it is, then.  


* * *

  
Charles finds Lehnsherr only after an hour or so this time, back to him and sitting in the long grass to watch the sea.

“You again,” he says by means of greeting when Charles lowers himself down by Lehnsherr’s side. “Is the afterlife really that interesting?” The green blanket from before is inexplicably here too and Charles accepts it with a nod of thanks when Lehnsherr hands it over to him, wordless but genuine enough.

It's colder here than at the hills, sea-salt wind coming in from the water to trail through the grass. Lehnsherr has plucked a long-ish blade to toy with and it’s when he’s in the midst of knotting it, head bowed over this project, that he speaks again.

“You want something,” he says almost absently. He’s made it to two knots before the fibres give way, having maybe tugged too hard or pulled too tight. “I’ve thought it through since you left; there’s no other reason why you’d be here, or why you’re back again, for that matter.”

“You didn’t entertain the notion that perhaps there’s no ulterior motive?”

Lehnsherr does look up now, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the suggestion.

“No,” comes the blunt reply. “So you can stop fucking around with me, Charles, even if I do seem to have the rest of eternity to spare.”

A predicament. Charles considers the blades of grass in his own hand, pulled up without a thought as Lehnsherr had been speaking, and wonders where to go from here. He needs time for this, patience, and damned if he can’t always get both from Frost.

“The first time we met--,” Charles says at length, “--you said that you knew my work, right?" Lehnsherr raises an eyebrow at this, but Charles barrels on, tone still as light as you please. "Would it be presumptuous then, to also assume that you know what my mutation is capable of?”

The sound that escapes Erik is half scoff, half bark of humourless laughter.

“Don’t be stupid.” The pile of shredded grass on Erik’s lap is growing bit by bit with every passing moment and every new centimeter he tears off. “Of course I knew. We all knew, even if we speculated about the actual extent of your abilities.”

_Extrapolating from that, wouldn’t it just be easier if I just took what I want, or made you give me what I want instead of beating around the bush like this?_

Erik startles and the shreds scatter, Charles already bracing himself for whatever violent backlash that Erik’s subconscious might inflict on him. As amendable as most minds are to being used as construction sites, Charles has found out the hard way that the subconscious doesn’t always appreciate additional manipulations while being forced to bear the extra weight of his presence, Charles having been forced out of dreamscapes in the worst ways possible. If Erik's mind pitches him over the side of the cliff right now, he'll have no one to blame but his own recklessness.

"I'm sorry," he adds in what he hopes is a convincing manner when Erik doesn't seem to have a response ready. "I didn't mean to do it so bluntly, but this was the fastest way to make you understand." 

"Understand?" echoes Erik. The change is subtle, but Charles can see the new wariness with which Erik watches him, the tension in the line of his shoulders. Charles presses on all the same, letting just enough eagerness bleed into his own stance.

"I've been trying to find an easier way to tell you, but...let me at least make this much clear to you. I’m not here to take anything _from_ you, Erik.” Careful now, careful. Charles would like to think that he’s an old hand at lying by now, but that still doesn’t change the fact that anything and everything can still go wrong from here. “I’m here to offer you something.”

"And that would be?”

Charles braces himself, drawing in a steadying breath. Watchful. Careful. Everything that happens after this will pivot around his next few words.

“The possibility of waking up,” he says quietly. Erik has suddenly gone very still, the colour draining from his cheeks. “You’re not dead, Erik. This is a dream.”  


* * *

  
Charles has run this con before. The long con, Hank likes to call it, even though Charles still sometimes tries to think of con as being the shortened form of _confession._ After all, isn’t truth one of the most solid bases to build a lie on? Because there isalways some semblance of truth here, in the tangents and fragments, Charles never straying too far from the set narrative.

This is a dream. This is a choice. This is you, with your memories weighing you down.

“You were lucky,” Charles is saying even as he quietly blesses the fact that Hank had made it a standard procedure to mix amnesiacs into the initial sedatives for every subject that passes through his hands. Less trauma all around, if no one can remember where they would be if they ever woke up. “We don’t know who brought you in, but an hour later and you would have bled out.” 

“I should have felt it.” Erik’s hands are digging into his thighs now, fingers gripping at flesh and fabric as the very air itself seems to have crept a little closer. If Charles cares to look at it, the sea has turned choppy with heavier waves, cold and grey at high tide. 

“It’s hard to anticipate something like a mugging, Erik. There’s –” 

“No, you don’t understand.” The strain in Erik’s voice is palpable and Charles doesn’t pick up where his sentence had been cut off, staying quiet to watch the way Erik has fisted his hands, an unconscious clenching and unclenching that makes the white of his knuckles stand out. “ _I should have felt it._ ”

When it’s clear that Charles still doesn’t quite comprehend, Erik makes a frustrated sound, casting his eyes about for something that clearly isn’t available. He’s distressed, that much is obvious, but as for why? Erik doesn’t seem inclined to offer any reasons, and Charles isn’t as desperate as to go pressing for them now.

“You’re quite safe with us, if that’s what’s troubling you,” offers Charles as a last resort when Erik’s agitation only seems to continue simmering with each passing moment. This, at least, holds Erik’s attention and the other man rounds on Charles, having gotten to his feet earlier to pace out his frustration.

“You’re sure no one knows who brought me in? No details about the incident whatsoever?”

Charles shakes his head. 

“None. If you really want to know, we might be able to show you the CCTV recordings when you wake up–” Barely a flinch here, lying like a second nature by now, “–but I don’t know how much good that will do. ER says that whoever brought you in didn’t stick around for long enough for anyone to even catch a proper glimpse. Just–” Charles makes a vague hand gesture here, trying to convey the idea of someone leaving in a rush,  “–passed you to the doctors and left. Probably didn’t want to deal with the bureaucracy.”

Erik sighs at this point and Charles doesn’t know whether to call it one of resignation or relief, glimpses of both in the way that Erik’s shoulders lose some of that previous tension.

“If there’s anyone you’d want us to contact–”

“No,” Erik says sharply, stopping short in his small circuit of the cliffside. “No, it’s fine.” 

“Not even a next of kin or anything? Someone to look after your place, or–”

“I said it’s fine,” comes the curt shut-down and there’s a finality there that has Charles knowing better than to pursue that line of inquiry.

“In that case, I know I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but...you should just be aware that this might take a while. The mind is a delicate thing, and I don’t want to rush things, only to end up causing more damage. I know it’s a lot to take in at the moment and usually I’d prefer to ease patients into these kinds of things, but since you already have an inkling of what my mutation can do…” Charles trails off, looking up hopefully at Erik who nods his assent at this.

"It was the right thing to do," he says and there's the briefest moment of hesitation before he walks back towards Charles, settling himself down in the long grass again. "To be honest, I would have preferred it if you had told me sooner rather than later, but you’re here now, and we’re on the same page.” 

Fidgety and agitated only a few moments before, Erik seems to have reached deep to force on a front of calmness.

"So tell me, Charles." There's a newfound determination in Erik's gaze when he turns towards to Charles, a sharpness there that Charles had only seen shadows of beforehand. "Tell me how you're going to wake me up."  


* * *

  
Charles is by no means proud of this fact, but it's undeniable that his brief few semesters of teaching have left him with the uncanny ability to sound authoritative in almost any situation, even more so when weaving lies out of thin air.

"When I first started here, we thought it might have just been as simple as...waking someone up from the inside out, if that makes any kind of sense."

"And it didn't work, I take it?"

Charles allows himself a grimace and this, at least, is somewhat real. They _had_ learnt the hard way, the first few tries. Conscious, subjects put up too much of a fight, and forcibly wrenching out threads of information like that left Charles with nightmares for days on end, standing under the shower at 4 in the morning still trying to scrub himself clean of imagined blood. 

"We learned fast after that," he says at length. "You can't force the mind to do something the body isn't ready for, and even then, even with everything seemingly working and in place, it's rarely that straightforward. If it were simply a matter of a patient _wanting_ to wake up, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now."

The stagnant quality of time has left the air just as cold as it had been when Charles had first got here hours ago, but at least Charles has had the time to acclimatise by now, and the loss of his green blanket isn’t one that he feels too keenly.

"Imagine–" he says as he lays it out on the grass between them, "–that this is how your mind might look like to a telepath." 

"Cheap and fraying at the edges?" Erik deadpans to Charles’ eternal surprise and this manages to startle to laugh out of Charles. "Or do you mean flat and damp?"

"Thankfully, neither." A slow-growing familiarity between the both of them has softened Erik a little and he's sitting cross-legged to face Charles now. Has his elbow resting on one knee and chin cradled against his palm as he watches Charles pull a corner straight.

"Maybe a blanket isn't the best metaphor to use, but think of it more as a non-linear representation, if you will. All your thoughts and memories, all your experiences, laid out on here, without any sort of timeline to keep them in order." 

"A complete mess, basically."

"A complete mess," Charles agrees. "But only in terms of organisation, and it's the same for everyone, so don't feel too special in that respect." He gathers up the edges closest to him in one hand then, the two corners pinched together between his fingers so he can lift the blanket partway off the grass.

“Now imagine that the ground is the baseline for being in a comatose state, and that to bring someone out of that, you’ll need to somehow...lift someone’s mind out of it, for lack of a better word. I’m only one person though, so no matter how I try–” Charles reaches over to gather up the remaining two edges of the blanket into his other hand, “–I’m going to somehow leave something behind. See how the middle sags when I pick it up with both hands?”

Erik nods, brows furrowed as he watches without comment.

“We don’t want that, because that means you’ll never really get everything in that particular area back on par with the rest of your mind. What we _do_ want is a more of even lift all around, so that way, you’ll wake up hopefully as intact as you went to sleep.” 

“So what you’re trying to say is...” Almost unconsciously, Erik has already started to straighten, and it’s with ease that he catches the ends of the blanket that Charles throws to him. “You need someone to help keep it even, right?”

“Precisely that. It would be easier with two telepaths, of course, but we’re stretched thin in that area as it is. That’s where you’re going to have to step in.” One corner in each of their hands, they’ve more or less managed to smoothen out the blanket’s surface, looking all for the world like a two-man folding team.

“You know your own mind better than anyone else ever will, so you’ll know which memories carry the most weight. I haven’t thought of a way to illustrate this next bit with a blanket yet, but what I’ll need you to do is...keep those memories close. Know them, inside and out, because you’ll be the one carrying those to the surface, so to speak. I can take care of the rest, but if I have to take on maybe five or six substantial ones on top of them, there’s a very real chance that I won’t be able to bring everything back up with me.” 

Charles looks at the way the fabric has gone taut between the both of them and tugs on his edge a little, making Erik glance up from his end of the blanket to look at Charles instead.

“If there’s any chance you’re daunted by all of this, don’t be,” he says gently. “I know it can be all a bit intimidating, if you think too much about it, but I promise you, this will be a lot less difficult than it currently sounds.”

There’s a furrow starting to form between Erik’s eyes and the beginnings of a frown have already taken root there by the time Erik opens his mouth to speak.

“These memories,” Erik voices cautiously. “When you mean weight…”

“I mean memories that stand out the most to you. Things and events that you remember clearly above all else.”

By some wordless mutual agreement, they’ve both started to allow the blanket to sag between them, grips loosening until the blanket is laid back to rest on the ground instead. 

“I’ve been asked before,” Charles continues on, “If it’s possible to only take the happy ones and leave everything else behind to be forgotten but…” Hands unoccupied now, Charles is free to steeple his fingers, pads of his fingers bouncing lightly off each other as he speaks.

“That’s not something I’d recommend,” he finally says. “It’ll hurt, yes, to end up having to dig up some of the more painful ones, but we need to acknowledge that whoever it is that we are today is formed by _all_ our past experiences, and not just the good ones. Take the origin away and I don’t know how the mind will be able to cope with the disconnect.” 

Except this is a blatant lie, because Charles does know, far too intimately, what happens when you pull something out in its entirety. When invasions through brute force had proved that disastrous, Intelligence had been forced to turn to a more espionage-esque approach instead. If the mind couldn’t even remember what had been stolen, then surely nothing too terrible could come out of it?

Wrong. So, so wrong. If this approach managed to spare Charles the misery of being in the midst of a mind driven to madness, that didn’t change the fact that subjects still fell apart, only at a later date and in far more wretched ways.

Charles doesn’t make it a point to keep track of what happens to the people he steals from after they wake, but Hank had reported the results back to him all the same, Research coming back with the same complaints. Post-dreaming, subjects trembled for hours on end, unable to stop as their minds shredded thought after thought, turned each memory inside out in search of a way to explain the sudden loss. Others would scream instead, clawing at their heads to try and make the churning stop, not relenting until they drew blood and reached bone. 

Another overhaul, then. Charles demanding something else, or nothing at all, which has finally led to this. It’s a much longer procedure, yes, and infinitely more delicate, but at least Charles can sleep a little better most nights. Lying isn’t quite the same as outright destruction, and given the luxury of a choice, Charles would pick coaxing over coercion any day.

“This means I’ll have to relive them, then? The memories I’ve chosen.”

Erik is looking out to the water again when he speaks next, the sky and sea finally registering some sort of change after so long. Grey and white-shaded before, the slightest traces of colours are starting to streak above the clouds now, an impossible sunset trying to take place. 

“Unfortunately, yes, Maybe multiple times, even, just to make sure, since this isn’t something you’d want to take chances with.”

“And you’ll be there each time?”

Charles pauses and it’s the lack of obvious emotion behind the question that has thrown him off to some degree. Given the circumstances, it’s either Lehnsherr has one of the best poker-faces that Charles has ever come across, or he just simply doesn’t give a fuck.

“I’ll need to be there to see which memories you’ll end up choosing, so that will necessitate living it through once with you, but for every occasion after that…” Charles shrugs, watching Erik carefully all the while. “I’ll only be there if you want me to be. I know it’s incredibly invasive and I apologise for that, but this is safest way we’ve worked out so far, and whatever you share with me won’t be shared anywhere else. Doctor’s honour.”

Defying all sense, the sky above them has somehow drifted into the red and gold colours of an early twilight. It would almost be peaceful if not for the underlying sensation of unease, a borderline restlessness on both their parts. Everything from here on out will hang entirely on Erik’s complacency in this, his choice to accept Charles’ spiel without question.

Short of falling back onto old tactics for the information that Intelligence wants to see, Charles legitimately doesn’t know how else to work with Lehnsherr anymore if the other man doesn’t agree to this. It’s not an ideal situation to be in, but then again, it’s not like Charles has any other options on hand. He’s already delayed long enough and if there’s one thing he’s learnt about Intelligence over the past two years, it’s that they don’t, _don’t_  like being made to wait. 

“I already know which ones I want to carry,” Erik says, just when Charles is trying to find it in himself to do the necessary.

“Oh?”

“They’re probably not as many as you said you wanted before, but I’ll need time to think about the rest.”

“Lucky for you, time is not something we’re in want for,” Charles lies easily.

It’s a pleasant surprise, if a bit inconvenient. Charles would have very much preferred Lehnsherr to be uncertain, which would have made it easier for Charles to sift through Lehnsherr’s memories himself, but...this is still a far better alternative to whatever choice Charles had been left with. Emboldened by Lehnsherr’s decision, Charles presses on, tone deceptively light.

“Since I’m already here–” he says almost offhand, “–would you like a trial run? We don’t have to do much, but I can at least walk you through the process.” And at the same time, hopefully salvage enough information to convince Frost that this is a project worth investing it, though Lehnsherr needn’t know that.

A flash of hesitancy passes through Lehnsherr’s face, but Charles has been working on looking pitifully sincere all these hours and it seems to have paid off, because something in Lehnsherr relents. 

“Okay,” he says eventually. “Teach me how to do it and I’ll show you the memory.”  


* * *

   
It’s not easy, trying to explain what feels like second-nature to telepaths, but Charles has experience on his side, backed up with the gift of being very, very good at sounding convincing when he needs to be.

“It’s quite simple, really,” he’s saying as Erik follows him back down towards where the hills had been, the crash of water on rock growing fainter and fainter with each step they take. “Most of the patients I work with don’t have the advantage of being quite so conscious when I come in here, so we’re at an advantage here. With you here, what we can do instead of sifting through each individual memory is actually _bring_ the memory up instead. Rather like reeling in a fishing line, rather than casting a net out, if that illustration helps.” 

“So I just...think of the memory I want?”

“That and narrate it, if you can. I won’t go into the technicalities because it’ll make very little sense but the clearer you make the scene, the easier it’ll be for me to find it.”

“And you can just pull it out of nothing like that?” 

Charles grins and waves a hand at the wide expanse of nothing they’ve suddenly found themselves in and Erik stops in his tracks, his disquiet making the air seem to undulate. No grass. No ground. Not even a sky hanging overhead.

“What did you do?" 

“Create nothing.” Charles lets his own grasp slip a little and colour bleeds back into their surroundings, the faintest outline of hills returning like an after-image.

“I was trying it out, while we were walking. Would have done it earlier too, but I wasn’t sure if your subconscious would let me. Evidently–” Another wave of his hand and the colours disappear, slate wiped completely clean once again, “–I’m finally allowed now, so that makes things considerably easier. Have I told you that you have an incredibly unique mind, Erik?” 

More at ease now that he can build again, Charles can afford the added animation in his motions, the hand gestures and easier smiles. The last of these he offers to Erik, who returns it, albeit unsurely.

“Because you do,” Charles continues on. “One of the most unique ones I’ve come across even, if you’ll believe it. Most of the patients I work with dream in a blank, unmoulded space when I come to them, but your mind...Your mind was already building, already creating. Did you know it took me hours to find you, that first time?”

Another wave of his hand and Charles pulls up his own memory of the dark, identical streets, buildings crowding in around them in orderly rows that stretch away into the distance. Because Charles isn’t a sadist, he’s cut the rain out to only leave the vaguest sense of cold-damp-dark infused into the air.

“I had no idea,” Erik begins a bit sheepishly, but Charles waves the upcoming apology away.

“It’s a talent, Erik, and an incredibly useful one at that. You’re a mutant, I take it? You haven’t mentioned it outright, but from the way you spoke during the first time we met, I would assume...”

Apprehension, before Erik appears to physically cast it off. “You assumed right,” comes the reply and that’s all Erik deigns to offer for now, Charles nodding in turn.

“Your mutation must have factored into this somehow, but that’s only a tangent of intellectual curiosity on my part, you don’t have to pay that too much attention. What we really should be talking about here is the fact that the way your mind works has made an already relatively straightforward job even more simple. Normally, I would have to search for your memory myself, but like I mentioned before, if you narrate it to me, there’s a distinct possibility your mind will just...fill in the spaces, to put it simply. Which is why I had to create a blank space to begin with.”

If Erik still looks a bit unconvinced, he doesn’t make an issue out of it, preferring instead to just reach out for the lamp post right beside him. Rain-slick and cold to touch, as it should be.

“You can place your own memories in here too?” he asks tentatively.

“With effort, yes. This was easier, since this is technically a landscape from your own mind, and I just pulled your ideation of it to fill the spaces. If I want something that’s entirely from my end, it’ll take a lot more work.” 

Erik makes a contemplative sound at this, a low mm that Charles knows he wants to pursue. Time is running out though, and while Charles hasn’t been keeping an exact measurement of his hours here, the slight ache starting to spread from the base of his skull is indication enough of just how much longer he’ll have with Erik in here. An hour, perhaps? An hour and a half if he’s lucky?

“Up for a trial run?” Charles prompts and Erik shrugs, arms folded against the cold.

“If it’s that easy, sure.”

They’re back to that white, borderless place again, and Charles can feel the edges of Erik’s subconscious yielding more and more with each new exploitation, just the barest hint of a struggle before it gives way. It won’t be long now, before Charles can build like normal in here.

“Whenever you’re ready, then.”


	3. Chapter 3

Erik at twelve is an awkward, scrawny thing, only the width of his shoulders giving Charles the smallest of inklings that the gangly teen in front of them really is indeed the same person as Erik. If Charles is busy watching Erik’s younger counterpart, Erik himself has his attention set fully on the woman who stands next to his previous self, the look on his face caught somewhere between fondness and grief.  
   
“Your mother?” Charles asks quietly and Erik nods, the both of them starting to follow the two down a city street. Charles hadn’t built the scene as much as he had merely nudged the pieces into place, this particular memory obviously still vivid enough for Erik’s mind to complete the spaces without even having to tell Charles anything beyond the time and place.  
   
“She passed, about six years ago. Pneumonia.” There’s a downcast set to the line of Erik’s mouth and Charles doesn’t think much of how he automatically reaches out clasp Erik on the shoulder. Thinks even less of it when Erik doesn’t shy away from the touch.  
   
“I’m sorry about that,” he says sincerely. “It’s always tough, when you lose a parent.”  
   
“Went through it as well?”  
   
Charles tries hard not to grimace and eventually ends up with a grim “You can say that,” though Sharon is technically still very much alive. Given the amount of contact that Charles has had with her over the past twenty years or so though, Charles thinks it’s pointless to go into semantics.  
   
At this point, pre-teen Erik has taken to lingering on the sidewalk while waiting for his mother to finish peering at shop’s table piece display through the window, idly scuffing the soles of his shoes as he watches the cars. It’s a wholly ordinary sort of scene, not unlike something Charles would see almost every day in the city, but next to him, Erik has stiffened with some unknown tension.  
   
“Erik?” Charles prods carefully and Erik just shakes his head.  
   
“I thought it’d be easier to see this happen again because I already know the outcome, but...watch.”  
   
And so Charles does. Hears the shouts first, from a distance above, and jerks his head up in time to see one of the metal cages holding an air-conditioning unit to the building’s surface start to give way, nameless hands grasping uselessly at it from an open window. On the ground, teenage Erik has lifted his head at the disturbance too and already has one hand raised to shout a warning to his mother, but there’s an awful screech of metal from above, followed by a shower of sparks as the unit, trailing cage and all, detaches from the side of the wall to hurtle down.  
   
Charles would look away if there was time, but a terrible, desperate sound is rising from Erik’s young throat, arm outstretched but still much too far away, and–  
   
“My god,” Charles murmurs under his breath. “Telekinesis?”  
   
Beside him, Erik regards the unit floating just half a metre above his mother’s head with disdain, quite heedless of the way that his younger self is screaming for his mother to move,  _move mama I don’t know how long I can_.   
   
“Metallokinesis, mostly. Magnetic fields too, to some extent, but that’s still a work in progress.”   
   
“First instance?”  
   
“Had no idea up to the moment itself.”  
   
The unit crashes to the ground in a shower of sparks and groaning metal, and Charles takes an involuntary step back when younger-Erik runs past him to fall, sobbing, into his mother’s arms, shaking all the while.   
   
 _Alles gute_ ,  _liebling_ ,  _you were so brave_  she keeps saying through her own tears as she presses her forehead to Erik’s, drawing back now and again to soothe his fringe out of his eyes. Erik is stoic next to him, but Charles can see the way he’s trying to hide the tremors of his hands under folded arms, eyes bright as he looks ahead.  
   
 _Alles gute_.  
 

* * *

  
“Metal  _and_  magnetic fields?” Emma would never do something as crass as lean forward from sheer interest, but in this instance, she’s come very, very close to it, actually reaching out for the file just as Charles is about to hand it over instead of waiting for it to slide across to her side of the table. “He’s more valuable than we thought.”  
   
“Indeed.”  
   
“Anything else of note that you’d care to share?”  
   
Charles inclines his head at the file still unopened in Emma’s hands, to which Emma just raises an eyebrow.  
   
“If I simply wanted an errand boy to send me a file, Charles, I wouldn’t have asked you to deliver it. You were in there for five hours again. Surely that can’t be the only thing worth reporting back about?”  
   
“Forgive me if I don’t feel like speaking much, but like you said, I was in there for five hours. Unless you want to hear about the possibilities of Lehnsherr having mummy issues, then there really isn’t much to talk about.”  
   
“Just as charming as ever, aren’t you?”  
   
“I do try.”  
   
Emma isn’t predisposed to let Charles off this easy though, keeping Charles waiting even as she takes her time to peruse each page of the document he had handed her.  
   
“This,” she says after a while and lets her finger rest on a line near the bottom of the third page, Charles not bothering to hide the sigh he heaves out. “Would you care to explain what you mean by  _possible indications of slight paranoia_?”  
   
“Maybe paranoia is a strong word to use, but it’s exactly what it says on the paper. Like you already know, I’ve run the hospital scenario with him, and instead of the usual reactions, what he’s showcased is relatively...different.”  
   
“Not upset?”  
   
“Upset, yes, but not in the way we’re used to.” Charles drums his fingers on the table as he thinks this out, trying to find the best way to put what he had felt from Erik into words. It wasn’t...fear, per se, but more like a flare of trepidation, almost angry in its intensity.   
   
“Lets just say that the fact that he’s in an apparent coma didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, in light of other issues,” he finally settles on and Emma makes a thoughtful sound, writing something down in the margins. “Who brought him in, mostly. He didn’t say as much, but you’d get the impression that he was incredibly concerned about the part his own mutation played in the mugging.”  
   
“Understandable, given the way we took him in.”  
   
This, at least, manages to rouse Charles out of the slouch he’s fallen into in his chair.  
   
“Would  _you_  care to explain what you mean by that?” he says sharply and Emma barely looks up from the additional notes she’s taking on the back of another page, pen barely stopping as she speaks.  
   
“We had no idea about his mutation when we first tried to get him in, so naturally, there were some...complications with his capture. We managed in the end, of course, but not without considerable force on our part.”  
   
It doesn’t take much for Charles to interpret this to mean they had almost killed Erik in the process of bringing him in. Erik had looked a little less wretched when he had come in for the second session today, bruises faded to a dull yellow instead of the livid purple of last week, but the extent of his injuries were still more than apparent, and Charles doesn’t care to know exactly what Emma might have meant by  _considerable force_.   
   
“If his metallokinesis was fine-tuned enough to always anticipate our coming, of course the mugging story isn’t going to cut it,” Emma says before Charles can say anything further. “Unless by some fluke his mugger wasn’t carrying a shred of metal on him, Lehnsherr wouldn’t take this just as any simple mugging.”  
   
“Murder, then?”  
   
“Congratulations, Charles, looks like that doctorate is good for something after all.”  
   
Charles purses his lips into a thin line, but holds his tongue for the time being. He’s had worse from Emma and lived, anyways.   
   
“I’ll keep an eye on the idea, make sure it doesn’t fester,” he says when Emma doesn’t follow up on her previous comment. “If he wants to think it was an attempted murder, we’ll just deal with that bridge when we have to cross it. For now, at least Lehnsherr has bought into the scenario enough to let me go through with it.”  
   
“It’s that damned baby face of yours, Charles. It’s like no one can believe that you’d willingly lie to them.”  
   
“Have I ever been willing, though?” Charles snaps and Emma laughs, flippant as ever.  
   
“Semantics, Charles. Mere semantics. In any case, you’ll most probably get Management’s sign-off on this, so in the meantime, do try and keep your little metallokinetic friend in check. It’d be a pity to go through all this paperwork, only to have him haemorrhage to death in his sleep because you couldn’t keep your lies straight. ” Pen twirling in one hand, Emma angles it towards the door in clear dismissal.  
   
“Be a dear and shut it on the way out, will you?”  
   
Charles slams it hard enough for the frame to shake.  
 

* * *

  
Charles has to wonder, sometimes, how a gentle soul like Hank had come to work for an organisation like Intelligence. Hank always insists, swears upon his life that there’s no coercion involved, but Charles has been dealing in lies for long enough to know one when he sees one. At the same time, Charles also knows when to let lies just be lies and leave them be, so he’s never really pressed Hank for more than the other man is ready to give. For the moment, Hank is just Hank the medical consultant, stationed in the labs to make sure that the people who pass through the doors of his labs go to sleep and sometimes, if they’re very lucky, wake up.  
   
“This is practically uncharted territory for us, Charles. We don’t know how his mutation might be affecting the way he dreams,” Hank is saying urgently as Charles drops back into the interrogation labs to collect his things. On the cot in the corner, Erik is still asleep, and will likely remain so for the next few weeks. “You’re going to be working in very dangerous areas here.”  
   
“And everything we’ve been doing before this was considered safe?” Charles rubs a tired hand across his face and tears his gaze away from Erik, leaning against the edge of his usual bed with his bag resting against his front. “You’ve already upped the sedation. That should be enough for the time being.”  
   
Hank looks far from convinced, but it’s not like either of them can do anything at this point. What Intelligence wants, Intelligence will get, well-being of either subject or staff be damned.  
   
“I take it that this means they intend to take up your suggested timeframe for Lehnsherr?” Hank says, no small amount of weariness hiding behind his words. “And you’ve…” A brief stumbling, because Hank has never been good at talking about this. “You’ve been getting the dosages you need in the meantime, right?”  
   
“I have, don’t worry. They haven’t missed a single one since that one time in January, and honestly, I have to admit, I had that one coming.”  
  
  
  
The look on Hank’s face says he thinks otherwise, but neither of them are in the mood for an argument now. If Erik is going to be here long-term, Hank is going to have to make the necessary arrangements for his housing, while Charles, on the other hand, is going to have to steel himself for what could possibly be the most exhausting few weeks of his life, working with Erik almost on a daily basis to establish the kind of rapport he’ll need to access the kinds of information Intelligence will need. Names. Locations. Structures.  
   
Erik had been one of the cornerstones of the movement, and if they want to mine him for all he’s worth, Charles is going to have to be very careful with how he works. No room for mistakes, or for thoughts to slip through the cracks, and as much as he hates having to agree with Emma on anything, Charles  _will_  have to keep his lies straight.   
   
“Goodnight, Hank,” Charles hears himself say as he pushes off from the bed and Hank steps aside to let him leave. “See you tomorrow?”  
   
“Now that’s something I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you.” There’s a deeply unsatisfied look on Hank’s face, but he forces a smile for Charles’ sake anyways. “See you tomorrow, Charles.”  
 

* * *

  
Because the third time’s the charm, Erik is waiting for Charles when Charles steps into the dreamscape.  
   
“I tried, while you were gone,” Erik says by means of explanation when Charles turns slowly on the spot to take in the sun-drenched courtyard, the slanted roofs of other buildings rising beyond the walls that currently hem them in.  
   
“You studied here?”   
   
“If you can call slacking off studying…” Erik trails off, offering a wry grin in place of whatever else he had intended to say.   
   
It’s not a university that Charles can recognise immediately, but even with the lack of students wandering it’s hallways, the square, with it's trodden grass and open air corridors snaking off into the depths of other buildings, isn't something that would be out of place in any campus.   
   
“Let me guess, engineering? Architecture?” To say that Charles is delighted would be a bit too much of a stretch, but Erik’s work is still something that he can definitely appreciate, the bricks sun-warmed when he touches them and columns just as solid as what he’d expect to find in real life. “My god, the amount of detail you’ve managed to create.”   
   
He rounds on Erik, who has retreated into the shade of a nearby corridor to watch Charles’ enthusing from a distance.  
   
“This is amazing, Erik.”  
   
Face still perfectly bland, Erik merely lifts a shoulder in a vague approximation of a shrug.   
   
“I couldn’t figure out how to make the actual memory itself,” he says, musing. “But...it still does feel good, to be here again."  
   
A pause then, as he hesitates, but the moment passes and there’s the barest shade of fondness to Erik’s voice when he speaks next.   
   
“Also, to answer your earlier question, you actually did guess right the first time. Four years of engineering in college. Industrial design, to be exact.”  
   
Charles lets out a low whistle of approval.  
   
“Should have guessed that you’d have your roots in something like that. I suppose your employers are having a field day with your mutation?”   
   
It’s offhand enough for it to be just a throwaway question, but just like that, Erik’s expression shutters, the relaxed slouch he had taken up against his column straightening into something a little more cautious.  
   
“They were happy enough,” Erik says stiffly. “I’m taking a break though, for the moment. Thought it was time for a change of scenery.”  
   
Fascinating. Of course running the Brotherhood at the size that it's allegedly at right now wouldn't allow for a day job, but it's still the kind of added confirmation Intelligence is looking for.  
   
“Tell me about it,” Charles sighs as he steps in from the sun to take his place at the column just across Erik's. “Here’s to your break being more of a break than mine ever aspired to be, at any rate. I thought a change in scenery would entail something more along the lines of an extended beach vacation, but…”   
   
Charles folds his arms tighter around his chest, head tipped back just enough to rest on the stones. There’s the smallest of smiles playing on his lips.   
   
“Here we are.”  
   
“Here we are indeed. And I know this is probably going to sound awful, but...” Erik tilts his head amicably at Charles’ general direction, some of the initial caginess from before having dissipated at Charles' own show of ease. “Can I just say that I’m incredibly glad that you’re here and not on that beach vacation of yours?”  
   
Sunlight, warm and artificial, is slanting across the floor, columns throwing long shadows onto the ground. Charles laughs and the sound of it echoes across the courtyard  
   
“Of course you can. And just so that this stays even, I'm going to put my two cents in too: You and me both, Erik."   
   
Inexplicably, it feels as if something has shifted in the air, though Charles can’t pinpoint  _what_ , exactly. A subtleness?  An underlying sense not yet known? Erik is watching him with his face angled away from the light, half-swathed in shadows.  
   
“You and me both.”  
 

* * *

  
The edges of Erik’s memory are softer-edged, this time around. Warmer. Like coming home, instead of finding it.   
   
“First semester, second year,” Erik offers by means of explanation when a more recognisable version of himself emerges from one of the corridors. No longer the awkward, gangly teen that he had been, this Erik has had time to grow into his limbs and it’s with a quiet sort of confidence that he leisurely makes his way towards where a small clump of students has started to gather, just off-center of the courtyard.  
   
“Slacking off, I take it?” teases Charles and Erik huffs out a half-snort of amusement.  
   
“For once, no. This was...right after Fluid Mechanics, actually. Wednesday afternoons, three solid hours of hell.” There’s a grin on Erik’s face as he watches his younger self throw his backpack onto the grass and fling himself down after it, the rest of the group making space for him with the usual noise expected of university students. “Fuck that class, seriously.”  
   
Summer is gentle here, bright and sun-kissed without the price of being stiflingly hot. When Erik steps out from the shade to walk back onto the grass, Charles follows him without a second thought.  
   
“You still keep in touch with a lot of them?” he asks as they near the edges of the group and Erik looks up from where he had been watching an obviously familiar story make another appearance, a small, private smile on his face.  
   
“None.” At Charles’ puzzlement, Erik gestures at the girl seated next to him in the circle. “They were all mostly Magda’s friends anyways, and after she…” A joke is made and laughter explodes from the group, the one named Magda laughing the loudest of all, Erik’s eyes gone gentle as he pauses to watch himself watch her.  
   
“After she died, there really wasn’t anything else to keep the rest of us in the same circles,” he finishes and it’s barely audible over the cacophony of teasing that’s apparently taking place now, Magda burying her face in her hands and shoulders shaking with laughter as Erik pats her on the back, Magda eventually leaning into the touch with time.  
   
“I’m sorry,” Charles says softly and Erik shakes his head, though he looks for the world like he would give anything to trade places with his younger self.  
   
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago now, anyways.” It looks like it takes physical effort for Erik to step away from where he’s currently standing, but he manages anyways, walking away from Magda to start a slow circuit around the group instead.  
   
“For the longest time,” he says,  “I didn’t think this would be something I’d want to remember.”   
   
There’s a lull here before Erik speaks again, almost to himself as he walks.   
   
“She died later that day, you know. Five, maybe six hours after this. For a while, I thought that if maybe I had been in the car with her, it wouldn’t have happened, but...we’d all go mad that way, wouldn’t we? The what ifs, the could have beens that come with what we can do.”   
   
He looks at Magda then, young and still so, so alive here, and Charles feels Erik’s grief wash over him like a secondhand echo, an old bruise pressed upon.  
   
“It’s an awful memory in retrospect–” he says quietly,” “–but like you said, it’s not just the good that makes us who we are.”  
   
Erik doesn’t complete his circle. Instead, he comes to a stop beside Charles, who fights down the urge to shift.   
   
Towards or away from Erik, he doesn’t think he knows anymore.  
 

* * *

  
They watch the group break up and drift away, ones and twos called to classes or waiting friends until it’s only Erik and Magda left, lying in the grass. They’re arguing in low tones about a flyer that Erik has in his hands and it’s almost with a misplaced sense of accomplishment that Charles recognises an early incarnation of the stylised M that the Brotherhood has taken to using  
   
“She didn’t approve of my extracurriculars, as you can see,” Erik says wryly when he notes Charles’ interest in the flyer that Magda eventually plucks from between Erik’s fingers, quickly turning it into a paper plane that sails away from the both of them.  
   
“I’m assuming she was human?”  
   
“Wholly and unrepentantly, right down to the bone.” At this point, the argument has dissolved into exasperated laughter and Erik is sitting up, pulling Magda with him so he can pluck stray bits of dried grass from her hair. “We fought about a lot of other things, of course, but this…This we couldn’t see eye to eye, most of the time.”  
   
They’re standing by now, Magda and Erik’s counterpart, and Erik has fallen silent to watch them leave, Magda stooping mid-walk to pick up the pamphlet airplane she had made while younger-Erik waits for her a ways off, full of fond indulgence. By the time they vanish down one of the corridors, the courtyard has gone quiet again and the memory ends here, though the structures still stand.   
   
Erik is the first to break the silence.  
   
“If there’s any small consolation in this,” he says in the returned quiet. “It’s the fact that she didn’t have to see Northbank happen.” A sigh, Erik turning briefly to address Charles straight on, more of a method of distraction than anything else right now.  
“You were probably in university too, weren’t you, when the protests were happening?”  
   
“To be very honest…” Charles hesitates, before deciding that no real harm can come from this. “I was actually at Northbank itself, for a while.”  
   
It’s like watching a change happen in real time, the way Erik looks at Charles full of new approval and maybe even something that might pass for respect, under the right light. For the first time since this memory began, Charles has Erik’s full attention.  
   
“ _You_  were at Northbank?” Erik asks and it’s half impressed, mostly incredulous.   
   
“Is it that surprising that I was there?” comes the amused reply and Charles is suddenly made aware of how unintentionally daunting Erik can be when something has piqued his interest. “I’m afraid I’ve put my student activist days behind me now, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist at some point.”  
   
In all truth, Charles hadn’t gone for himself. He had been angry, of course, at the brutality that had happened, but it wasn’t out of righteous passion that he had been at the protests. No one knows this though, and no one has to, which makes it entirely unsurprisingly that Erik seems to have assumed that Charles’ presence at Northbank had been due to anything else.   
   
What  _is_  surprising though, is this:  
   
“I know you don’t have much time whenever you’re in here and I don’t want to infringe on your privacy, but…” There’s a strange expression of both sheepishness and blatant hope on Erik’s face. “Would it be possible to see how it was at Northbank? I’ve managed to talk to some who were there, over the years, but it won’t be comparable to actually living the actual memory itself.”  
   
And what’s even more surprising, however, is that Charles says yes.


	4. Chapter 4

Put simply, Northbank had been a disaster. Accounts tend to vary from person to person, faction to faction, but the fundamental aspect of it all remains as such:  
   
It was never about mutants to begin with.  
   
There had already been a series of minor protests happening throughout the winter of that year, students marching through the streets of Northbank to voice dissatisfaction over how the new university board of trustees had been mismanaging affairs. Fees were being hiked, while departments, already short-staffed and struggling as they were, trimmed ranks even further. Campus organisations were brought to heel. Student leaders, both human and mutant, faced the threat of expulsion if they were deemed as too problematic for the school.  
   
“I knew someone who studied here,” Charles shouts over the roar of the crowd around them and Erik is enthralled, content to let the scene pass him by. The memory is shakier than he’d like, prone to drifting apart if he doesn’t keep a firm hold on it, but Erik doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.   
   
“Mutant?” he bends down to ask in Charles ear and Charles nods, though he doesn’t offer any further explanation. He’s picked a portion of the memory that cuts her out, a ten-minute segment that will eventually dissolve into utter chaos at the end and signal the start of what would grow to become a three day stand-off. There would be 27 students dead at the end of it, 25 of which would be mutants.  
   
Though they’re only walking alongside the crowd by the fringe of the memory itself, the sound still carries, and Charles has to tug on Erik’s sleeve to catch his attention the next time he feels the urge to say something.  
   
“Do you see the police line, starting just at the end of– ” he starts before shaking his head in frustration, the rest of his words swallowed up by a new shout from the students. In retrospect, it might have been easier to just tamper with the sound levels of the memory itself, but that would defeat the purpose of wanting to give Erik the full experience, so–  
   
Charles taps the side of his head with a finger, Erik quick enough on the take-up to nod almost immediately.  
   
 _This is better, isn't it?_   _The first time might be a bit hard to grasp, but if you just try giving your reply more weight and direct it with intent at me, that should work._  
   
Erik frowns with concentration, and the first echo of his voice in Charles' mind sounds as if it's coming through static. Belatedly, Charles realises that he's never actually done something like this before in a dream.   
   
 _Like this?_ Erik tries again at Charles' prompting. It's gotten clearer with practice and Charles can't really determine whether the thrill down his spine is from having accomplished this much within a dreamscape, or the fact that it's Erik he accomplished it with. Either way:  
   
 _Brilliant._  
 

* * *

  
It only gets easier after that, Charles only needing to give Erik the slightest of nudges to get Erik looking in the right direction. Here, a glimpse of the face of the movement striding through the crowds, loudspeaker in one hand and her wings trailing on the asphalt. There, mutant and human carrying the same placards, NO MORE scrawled in red letters.   
   
Not even a metre away, a younger version of Charles has paused to share his water with a fellow protester and watching this, Erik has the widest grin on his face.  
   
 _Something funny?_ Charles mock-demands, the words holding no real heat. It's probably the first time that he's seen Erik smile this much.  
   
 _Has anyone told you that you haven't aged a single day?_  
   
Charles scoffs.  _I'm a telepath, Erik. Don't think that eternal youth comes as part of the package. Also, pretty sure I had more hair back then._  
   
This draws out a full on laugh from Erik, tendrils of his amusement trickling into Charles mind before he can recognise it for what it is and even by then, it feels too much like his own happiness to cut away.  
   
 _It's not like you're balding_ , Erik says soothingly.  
   
 _Oh, you don't know half of it_ , comes the dark reply, to which Erik just laughs more at.  
   
 _I can see most of it though, so isn't that all that matters?_  
   
This time, it's Charles' turn to laugh.  
   
 _Now that just sounds like something you'd say in a sleazy bar._  
   
 _Been to many of those now, have we?_  
   
The intent to follow this up comes across loud and clear from Erik's end first, but it's cut short by the first few shots of gunfire, these followed by a shrill scream ringing out from the front of the line.   
   
"Fuck," Erik says out loud with feeling. Just like that, the panic has started to spread, and it only escalates from there, a mess of confused chaos that student-Charles gets caught up in, vanishing from time to time as he’s pushed aside.   
   
 _It doesn't look like much on the outside, but the next few hours were pretty awful_ , Charles shares, a lot more sober than before. _I wasn't close enough to actually feel the deaths happen, thank god, but the panic alone was almost enough to knock me out._  
   
Sure enough, the next time the crowd clears enough for a direct view of Charles, Charles has his head in his hands, doubled over even as the crowd surges past him. In a few moments, he'll pull himself together and start looking for her instead, but Erik isn't going to see that.   
   
Instead, what Erik sees is an edited, very much abbreviated version of events:  
   
Charles fighting to the front of the line, made frantic with unnamed worry.   
   
The first canister of tear gas being hurled into the crowd, students ducking into their jackets and pushing back, stronger than before.  
   
Police voices drowned out by the wail of ambulance sirens.  
   
In the distance, the image that would come to be symbolic of Northbank for years to come: Wrenn with her wings snapped out to full length, silhouetted against the pale, watery light of a mid-winter morning as she hovers over the crowd to shout into the loudspeaker they had seen her holding from before,  _run, they have guns, run_.  
   
“God above,” Charles hears Erik say next to him and then Wrenn is falling, falling, Erik’s face pale and upturned to watch her being shot out of the sky.  
 

* * *

  
Charles’ grip had faltered at the end of the memory, colour and time leaching from the scene until it was like watching a disintegration happen in syncopated grey-scale, the scene gradually stuttering to a stop. All that’s left of the crowded streets from before is just the curb of the sidewalk they’re seated at now, Charles far too tired to hold anything else up.  
   
 _Was it what you expected_?   
   
 _Above and beyond_. Erik is bright eyed, the side of his knee knocking against Charles’ from how close they’re seated.  _Thank you, for that. You didn’t have to_.  
   
 _Don't mention it. It's only fair, I suppose._ He grins. _Show me yours and I'll show you mine?_  
   
 _I bet that line just works amazingly on all the ladies._  
   
It takes a moment for Charles to realise that with the world having gone quiet around them, there’s no more need to be speaking like this. That doesn’t feel like a valid enough reason to stop, though. In this new stillness, it’s actually possible to feel the weight of gratitude behind Erik’s thoughts, the underlying wave of  **amusement-fondness-warmth.**  
   
Charles jerks back almost immediately at the first brush of this, Erik thankfully still none the wiser from the abrupt withdrawal.   
   
No.   
   
No, no, no.   
   
What was he  _doing_?   
   
"Is everything alright?"   
   
 **Concern-confusion-spark of fear.**  
   
Charles blinks, the sound of Erik's voice pulling him back again from his moment of panic.   
   
"All good, don't worry," he lies through his teeth and tacks a smile on at the end just for good measure, Erik watching him closely for another few beats before the bout of apprehension drains away, Erik casting his gaze back out into the blank space before them.  
   
 _You should leave_ , Erik drops into his head, casual as ever.   
   
 **Disquiet-worry.**  
   
 _Oh god_ , Charles thinks privately to himself, even as he laughs to hide the dread that's growing in the pit of his stomach.  
   
 _Kicking me out so early, Lehnsherr?_  
   
 _If I recall, you're the one with the six hour curfew._  
   
 _I believe the word I used was a bit less juvenile._  
   
 _Doesn't change the meaning now, does it?_  
   
Charles throws his hands up in mock surrender, getting up from the curb and offering his hand to Erik so he can pull the other man up with him. Erik's palm is warm and dry in his, and it's with a jolt that Charles realises that this is the first time he's touched Erik. Almost fifteen hours gone, two weeks in.   
   
"You worry too much for someone who's in a coma," Charles says even as he lets go. Behind them, the curb itself is fading away now that Charles isn’t even trying anymore and Charles is suddenly aware of just how tired he is, the world having the annoying tendency to swim if he moves too fast.  
   
"And you care far too much about the opinion of someone in a coma,” retorts Erik. “Now stop making excuses and leave, please. It’s not like you’re going to be able to help me if you end up dying on the job.”  
   
“Nothing quite so serious, I assure you.” But Charles is already wavering on his feet, needing to reach out for Erik to steady himself.  
   
 **Troubled-distress-what if**  
   
 _Get out of my head, Charles, I can feel you trying to climb back in here_.  
   
"Going, going," Charles mumbles and waking up, this time around, feels suspiciously like falling.  
 

* * *

  
There’s a curl of distaste at the side of Emma’s mouth when Charles trudges into their check-in, haggard and still pale from the jolt back topside.   
   
“I heard from Hank that this particular session with Lehnsherr didn’t agree with you?” she says delicately and Charles lets out a humourless bark of laughter at this, easing himself into the closest chair. The room still has an annoying tendency to spin, if he moves too quick.   
   
“Oh the session itself was fine. It’s just the post-session, that was...disagreeable, as you so nicely put it. I trust that Hank has briefed you as to why I’m an hour late?”  
   
The disdain on Emma’s face sharpens.  
   
“Vaguely. He spared me the details.”  
   
Not that there were any details of note to be had, to begin with. Charles had woken up and promptly leaned over the side of the bed to vomit up the contents of his stomach, nauseous from overexertion and the sudden switch from dreamscape to reality. Showing Erik his own memories, on top of the six, maybe seven hours he had already spent in Erik’s own head has definitely not been Charles’ wisest decision thus far, but–  
   
“It was worth it though,” he says slowly. “The write-up isn’t complete, but there’s material you can use in there. Prior education. Some minor leverage even, if you need it.”  
   
“Oh?” Emma says coolly. “And here I was thinking that you spent all that time in Lehnsherr’s mind just frolicking around and making friends.”  
   
“If I hadn’t earned his trust at some point, did you think I would even be privy to any of this information I just fed to you? You originally contracted me for exactly this, Frost. Don’t act so surprised whenever I actually do end up working within my job scope.”  
   
“It’s cute, that you consider this work.”  
   
He’d be glad to spar with Emma on any other given day of the week, if only to offer the outward appearance of resistance, but Charles is tired today. So very, very tired, and somehow still carrying Erik’s secondhand sadness, the weight of it wearing his heart out.  
   
“Look,” he sighs instead of rising to Emma’s bait. “Do you want the follow-up to what you already have in the write-up or do you not?”  
   
“If you’d be so kind.”  
   
Something bitter is starting to coil in Charles’ chest, a tightening discomfort pressing up snug against his ribs, but Charles has sold more information for less, so why this? Why now?  
   
“Take notes if you must,” Charles says dully under Emma's frigid gaze, and feels the fatigue right down to his bones. “I’m not going to repeat myself.”  
 

* * *

  
Charles doesn’t really have a way with dealing with the inevitable guilt that comes. There are the nights, of course, or the long evenings where he does wonder what might become of the person he dreamed with, but that train of thought is a one way street, and Charles still can’t find it in himself to pursue it right to the end. Guilt is an old houseguest by now, and Charles has built around its presence. A permanent living arrangement that he knows as intimately as the back of his own hand, so why, then, does it feel as if someone has come in and shifted all the furniture an inch to the left?   
   
He could blame Northbank, if he wanted to. Dragging the memory out of the depths of his own mind and into Erik’s should have come at a cost, but what of it when Charles doesn’t mind the price? It’s as if something has changed, inside of him. As if Charles still has one foot in Erik’s head and Erik’s voice is still in his, a mixing of memories until Charles doesn’t know anymore, which grief, which longing belongs to who.   
   
It’s been years since he’s seen her. (Erik has never been to her grave.)  
   
Things were better back then. (He would have given anything for more time.)  
   
Why can’t he sleep? (When did dreaming feel more like waking up?)  
   
Something is broken, and if Charles doesn’t want to fix it just yet, it’s only because it’s been so very long, since he’s not felt so alone.   
 

* * *

  
Another week, another dose. Charles throws himself into whatever semblance of normalcy he can achieve whenever Intelligence doesn’t need him around, and by the time he’s contacted again, he can almost pretend that he’s going back to just another job. Almost.  
   
“The information checks out, so at least those extra hours haven’t gone to waste,” Emma says on the phone, with just the right amount of condescension. “We need more.”  
   
“Saturday?”  
   
“Tomorrow.”  
   
It’s a Wednesday night and Charles is surrounded by a stack of unmarked lab reports, courtesy of the part time position he has at the local school. More than a long way down from probably tenure at Columbia, but Intelligence hadn’t liked the visibility, so high-school biology it was, for now.   
   
“You know I can’t–” he begins, but Emma makes an impatient  _tch_ , steamrolling over whatever reason Charles had been prepared to give.  
   
“Tomorrow, or we’re halving next week’s dose.”   
   
Faced with the angry silence on Charles end of the line, Emma merely pauses for the briefest of moments before moving on.   
   
“Orders from on high, sweetie,” she croons. “Don’t shoot the messenger. We’ll make the necessary arrangements if you want us to. What should it be this time? Sick leave? Funeral to attend?”  
   
“Fuck off, Frost,” Charles grinds out and Emma has the audacity to laugh.  
   
“Gladly. 11am it is then, tomorrow. Try not to be late.”  
 

* * *

  
It’s not exactly a library that Erik has built this time, but with the number of books scattered across the floor, falling off each other in seemingly haphazard piles, it’s close enough to one for Charles to feel a small thrill of excitement. If previously he had any apprehension about walking into Erik’s mind again, all of it seems to have been swallowed up by what appears to be a veritable sea of books.  
   
“Keeping busy, I take it?” he asks as he sidesteps a particularly precariously stacked mound and Erik barely glances at Charles as he pulls down another book from the bookshelf at the far end of the room.   
   
“You were gone a long while,” comes the reply, Erik adding another book from the topmost shelf to the number he’s already carrying. “Had to do something in the meantime. Hold this for a moment, will you?”  
   
It’s a sleek, metal creature of a bookshelf that Erik has built, standing almost a head above Charles and stretching on further than he can see. Crammed to the brim with books of all shapes and sizes, Erik has to give up on his current stack to use both hands to reach a particularly slim volume nestled on the topmost shelf, stuck tightly between two unnamed hardbacks.  
   
“Couldn’t be bothered with the titles?”  
   
“Hmm?”   
   
Erik yanks the small booklet free and drops it triumphantly on top of the stack that Charles is holding for him, directing Charles to set it down wherever there’s space.  
   
“The books.” Charles picks one up at random and sure enough, it’s as unmarked as the others, though Erik seems to have some sort of system going with the stacks he’s building. “How do you even know which book you should be looking for?”  
   
“Because they’re not books?” Erik says, actually looking a little puzzled that Charles should even be asking such a question. “And they’re all mine anyways, so of course I know which one is which.”   
   
At Erik’s nod of permission, Charles flips open whatever he’s holding.  
   
“Oh,” he says quietly after a while, and there’s a pleased look on Erik’s face as he looks over Charles’ shoulder to observe the page that Charles has landed on. “This is…”  
   
“A memory, yes.” On the page, what Charles can only assume to be Erik’s handwriting has scrawled something about a lunch appointment, the script tending to shift into something else if Charles doesn’t pay it his full attention. “They’re all memories.”  
 

* * *

  
Charles has toyed with the idea before, of creating something like this. A repository, maybe, or even something as simple as a filing system, but it was never something he had ever pursued to fruition, simply because of how impossible it seemed. It was all well and good to build the container itself, but to persuade a mind to fill it? And to fill it in a way that made sense, at that? Impossible. Absolutely impossible.  
   
Until now, that is.  
   
“How did you even manage?” Charles asks as he tries to shift a few towering piles to make space on the floor, Erik having resorted to perching on a few stacks pushed together. “I knew you already had a remarkable amount of control over what happens in here, but...this is really something else altogether. It’s amazing, Erik, it really is.”   
   
To illustrate, he picks up a nearby book and flips it open, showing Erik the pictures that infuse it’s pages instead. Though blurred at parts, they’re still coherent enough a narrative for Charles to guess that this is a childhood memory of a car ride, and by the look on Erik’s face, it’s one that he remembers fondly.  
   
“You know,” Erik says when Charles shuts the book carefully and lays it back where he found it. “This is probably the second time you’ve used that adjective now, for what I’ve been doing. Should I be flattered?”  
   
“Just giving credit where credit is due, really.” Because the temptation is too much to bear, Charles uses his foot to gently nudge at one of the stacks that Erik is seated on and the movement sends Erik flailing for stability.  
   
“There,” Charles laughs even as he reaches out to help Erik steady himself. “Knocked you off your high horse, in case you were worried about all those compliments getting to you.”  
   
“Ha bloody ha. Two whole compliments, how shocking.”  
   
“Considering that this is only the fourth time we’re meeting, it really is, you know.”   
   
“What, you don’t wax lyrical about all your patients?”  
   
Charles considers this for a moment, using the pause to shift a few more stacks out of the way so that he can stretch his legs out and lean back on his arms, looking up so he can talk up to Erik who’s still perched on his little throne of unpublished memories.  
   
“Just the particularly difficult ones,” he finally says with a grin, “Since they’re the ones who need the most placating.”  
   
This results in Charles almost getting a book to the face, which in turn deteriorates into Erik actually falling off his book-seat for real, no thanks to a strategically executed kick from Charles. The fact that Erik chooses angles himself to fall  _on_  Charles can only be deemed as a retaliatory effort, and in the end, a truce has to be called amidst the sea of fallen books they’ve found themselves in.  
   
“I can’t believe I’ve got one of your memories digging into my back,” Charles groans from where he’s lying, with Erik half sprawled across him. Apparently not content with merely sharing the indignity of being half covered in books, Erik appears to want to take prisoners as well, if the way he’s disinclined to move is any indication.  
   
“Didn’t you know that remembering hurts?” comes the lofty reply from somewhere off to his side and Charles groans all the louder, trying to sit up. “No, wait, stop moving, that’s my shin you’re–  _ow_.”  
   
“Sorry,” Charles says cheerfully, not really sorry at all. It’s not a difficult extraction, but with the number of books they’ve somehow managed to bury themselves under, there’s the promise of it being be a slow and arduous one, Charles having given up on trying to move before Erik does. Who knew that edges of books could be so  _sharp_?  
   
“Okay down there?” Erik has braced himself on his palms and is currently trying to push himself up, except that Charles’ legs are in the way and the books keep slipping under his hands, making it all the more difficult to move.  
   
“I’ve been in worse situations, admittedly.”  
   
“Same.”  
   
They manage though, somehow. It takes effort and more coordination than expected, but Erik does finally get up without accidentally stepping on anything too important and Charles is free to take the hand offered to him, Erik pulling him to his feet so they can both survey the damage.  
   
“Please don’t tell me you had a system going here,” Charles says weakly when he sees the mess they’ve made. If the number of stacks had been intimidating at first, the sight of books heaped atop each other, some still on the brink of tumbling, is enough to drive home just how many memories a person can accumulate over the years.   
   
“Not really, no.” Erik has already started on trying to get his books back into some manner of orderliness, Charles bending to pass him books. “I would have started on one, if you were any later, but all of this…” He takes a particularly heavy tome from Charles, placing it as the base of a new stack, “It was mostly out of curiosity, really. Trying to see what I could remember and what I was already forgetting.”  
   
“Pleased with what you found out, then?”  
   
“Enough. I mean, I’ve come across more than a few empty books in here, and there are always things I wish I could have a memory of, but fading is in the nature of memories, isn’t it? We grow old. We forget.”  
   
They’ve made three new stacks by now, Erik holding his hand out for another book, only to find it not forthcoming. When he turns, it’s to find Charles with a book open on his lap, finger running down the side of one page as he thinks.  
   
“Charles?”  
   
Charles glances up from where he had been looking at the page. On it, Erik’s mind has imprinted a fading image of what Charles can only assume to be his childhood home, a man seated at a piano and a woman Charles vaguely recognises as Erik’s mother standing behind him to point something out on the music score.   
   
“Fading is in the nature of memories,” says Charles slowly as he holds the book out to Erik. “But that doesn’t mean we need to forget.”   
   
“Easy for a telepath to say.”   
   
Erik takes the book, still opened to the page that Charles had been looking at, and when he looks down at the image, his expression gentles almost immediately.  
   
“See what I mean?” he says softly. “I’m forgetting already. I didn’t even know I still had this.”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be that way though.”   
   
The words are out before Charles can even fully register them and Erik’s head snaps up at the sound of them, head no longer bowed over the page.  
   
“You’re saying you can–”  
   
“I’m not making any promises, but I can. I think I can.” Later, Charles will think of this moment as the point of no return, as the catalyst for everything that would come after, but at that moment, it just feels like just the most natural thing reply he could give.   
   
“If you want, I can help you remember.”  
 

* * *

  
Erik doesn’t know what to say, at first, so Charles fills the silence for him.

“It could help, actually, with what we’re trying to do,” he says. They’re still stacking books, if only to clear a space to sit and help Erik figure out which memory he wants Charles to try out first. “Obviously the more that you can remember, the better it’ll be for you in the long run, even if it means a slightly heavier load for me.”  
   
“You’d do that?”  
   
Charles shrugs, deceitfully flippant even though inside, he’s starting to doubt the wisdom of this. Would it really matter, in the grand scheme of things? A few extra days of happiness on Erik’s end, and then what?  
   
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t, since I’m already in here. And lest you accuse me of favouritism, it’s not that I don’t do this for the rest of my patients. It’s simply because I can’t.”  
   
For all of Charles’ attempt at explanations, Erik only offers him a raised eyebrow in return.  
   
“So the fact that you’re considering something that isn’t within your original job scope doesn’t count as favouritism?”  
   
“If it makes you sleep better at night, you can very well proceed with that train of thought.”  
   
“Already asleep. Coma, remember?”  
   
This pulls a laugh out of Charles and with it goes some of the heaviness that had been building in his chest, though it still just resettles back in a moment later.  
   
“Of course, how could I forget?”  
   
So perhaps this will come to nothing in the end. Perhaps Charles will have risked so much to take away so very little, at the end of all things, but the way Erik looks at him now makes Charles feel like someone else, a better person than he’s used to being and this, alone, would have been enough.  
 

* * *

  
They decide on the memory that Charles had unknowingly found for Erik, the one with his parents and the piano in the living room.   
   
“Your father played?” Charles asks as they pour over memory after memory, Erik picking through the books to find ones that relate the most closely with the one he's trying to remember and Charles trying his best to capture every single detail of every last image.   
   
"Badly, most of the time, but that didn't stop him."  
   
He passes Charles another book and this one is opened to a side profile of his father, seen as if from a very short distance from the floor. A child's impression, then.   
   
"You play anything?"  
   
Erik shakes his head, pushing aside a pile of books he has already gone through.  
   
"My mother used to say that she would have liked me to learn, but I think secretly, she was glad I didn't. Can you imagine, two terrible pianists in the same house?"  
   
"Who knows, you could have been a far better pianist than your father."  
   
"Really, Charles." Erik snorts, clearly amused with the prospect. "Your faith in me is astounding. Have we come to the part of the conversation where you call me some sort of flattering adjective again?"  
   
"Why, are you yearning that badly for my validation? You could just ask for a compliment, you know. I might have given you one.”  
   
There’s a comfortable rhythm to their conversations now, infused with banter and so much more liberal with laughter than before. If the Erik that Charles had first encountered was the epitome of guarded, then this Erik almost seems like a completely different man. More generous with smiles. Prone to giving as good as he gets, and usually even more.  
   
“I think we have enough for now,” Charles says in time as he surveys the two piles he’s created, a critical air about him. There’s a stack reserved for Erik’s memories of both his parents together while another carries his recollections of his childhood home, but even when combined, the both of them still fall short of what Charles had hoped to work with. It’ll have to do though, at this point. They’ve used up enough time on this as it is.  
   
Charles surveys the two piles he's created with a critical air. One for Erik's memories of both his parents together and one of his childhood home, and yet the combination of both still falling short of what Charles had hoped to work from. It will have to do, though. They've used up enough time on this as it is.  
   
“I know I’ve said it before, but–” Charles gestures at the blank space they’re standing in, having built an outside for Erik’s roomful of books, “–I’ve never done this before, so if it doesn’t work…”  
   
Erik shakes his head.   
   
“The fact that you’re even trying, Charles. That’s enough.”  
   
Something warm is creeping up the base of Charles’ spine, curling around to pool in the pit of his chest.  _I could give you more_ , Charles wants to say,  _I want to give you more_ , but then dread is chasing the feeling the down and wrenching it out before it can even take root, the crux of the problem like a knife edge pressed against his skin:  
   
Whatever that Charles can give, in the end, it will simply never be enough.  
  


* * *

  
This is the memory that Charles builds for Erik, cobbled together from the bits and pieces, the dusty corners of Erik’s mind:  
   
 _The sound that his father makes at the piano is a dreadful one, full of awkward clangs and strange pauses, but from the way that Mama laughs, it’s one that she enjoys, so Erik enjoys it too. There’s no semblance of days here, no passage of time, but it feels like it could be early on a Friday afternoon, the smell of khale baking in the kitchen and Papa home early from work._  
   
 _“At least try to keep time, Jakob,” Mama is saying, laughing as she does. She’s standing behind Papa and pointing at something on the sheets of paper that Papa is trying to play from, leaning in with one hand resting on Papa’s shoulder. “Three-four time, please, not four-four.”_  
   
 _“It’s an artistic impression, schatz.”_  
   
 _She counts for him then, and the sound is a lull under the helpless floundering that Erik’s father does on the keys, Mama soon taking to tapping the time out on the wooden side of the piano to help underscore her own voice._  
   
 _One, two, three, one, two, three._  
   
 _Sunlight is falling into the room, slow and golden. Standing in the light, Mama looks so much younger than he can remember her ever being. Papa is bent over the keys, intent as ever, but if he could just look up for Erik to see his face, just for one moment–_  
   
“Erik?”   
   
The touch that Charles lays on Erik’s arm is light enough to just be a brush but Erik still startles all the same, hand coming up to wipe at the tears on his cheeks before he turns to Charles.  
   
“Thank you,” he says thickly, and Charles can feel the outpouring of sheer  **want-longing-miss them**  from Erik without even having to peer into his head. “I didn’t...I didn’t think that I could still...after so long...” Erik stops, finally having come to terms with the fact that he probably won’t be able to finish his sentence.   
   
“Thank you,” he just says again, barely more than a hoarse whisper this time.  
   
There’s a wetness in Charles’ own eyes that wasn’t there before and it’s as if he’s unwittingly entered into some sort of strange feedback loop, where Erik’s sadness is his own and what Erik wants is what he wants too, more than anything.  
   
Except that Erik wants to reach out for Charles, which can’t be right, because surely, surely Charles can’t be wanting the counterpart to that, surely–  
   
Oh.  
   
 _Oh_.  
   
So this is how it feels like, to be held after so long.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It only gets easier from there, and worse in so many ways. Now that Charles knows what he can do, there just doesn’t seem to be a reason valid enough to make him stop doing it. Time is still a constraint, of course, and maybe not all the memories he retrieves for Erik are as detailed as he wants them to be, but as long as Charles tells himself that it’s all part of the job, everything is fine.  
   
Everything is fine when he stands with Erik at Magda’s funeral under a cornflower blue, high summer sky, because if Charles can only just remember the grieving faces of her family, this could be a form of leverage at some point.  
   
Everything is fine when Erik shows him the first apartment he buys with his own money and the subsequent look of unadulterated joy on his mother’s face when he takes her on a tour of it, because Erik could still own the place today, and property leaves paper trails.  
   
And everything is fine when in the midst of looking for yet another memory that he has misplaced, Erik turns to Charles beside him and knocks on the doors of Charles’ mind, a quiet  _may I–?_  that Charles’ breath hitches at, because he’s said yes before his mind has even caught up, and Erik kisses like he’s afraid of forgetting this the moment he stops. In turn, Charles had kissed Erik back, his hand cupped beneath the curve of Erik's head to hold him like Charles was afraid of remembering what would happen once it finally does stop.  
   
Everything is fine, everything is fine.  
   
Charles can use this. Needs this even, this level of trust, because if through this he'll have everything that Erik can give, then Charles’ job will simply be a matter of taking whatever is offered, and they will be done for good here.  
   
(Except when Charles closes his eyes at the end of the day, sleeping alone and dreaming of shared dreams, everything isn't fine in the slightest, and Charles is beginning to realise that he's forgotten how to tell a proper lie.)  
 

* * *

  
In truth, there's a sick irony to how that the more that Emma demands an ending to this operation, the more Erik starts speaking of what will happen once he wakes up.  
   
"Does it sound strange, when I say that sometimes I feel like it would be better not to wake up?"   
   
"Not that I mean to scare you, but sometimes I feel the same way too, for myself."  
   
Today, they're watching a slightly older Erik pick through scrap metal for something he can use, an assortment of different hues and textures already set aside in a small pile. It's by no means quiet in the junkyard that Charles has pulled out of one of Erik's books, but somehow, even with the sound of heavy machinery in the distance and the more than occasional thunk of Erik throwing rejected metal aside, there's a sense of peaceful contentment here, Erik ushering Charles into his mind so that Charles can feel the way different metals hum.  
   
"We all have to wake up at some point, though," Charles says in the ensuing silence. The both of them are seated shoulder to shoulder on the back end of a rusted car and Charles can feel Erik's powers stretching beneath him, a more subtle, more unconscious kind of outreaching than whatever his younger self is doing. "Things to do. Places to go."  
   
"People to meet," adds Erik absently, though he still bumps shoulders with Charles when he says this.   
   
To Charles' delight, Erik has started to float a smallish twist of metal towards them, remoulding it even as it hovers in the air.  
   
"You'll be there when I wake up, right?" he asks, casual, but Charles knows Erik’s mind like his own by now, and there’s a string of anxiety thrumming through the words.   
   
"Intend to hit me on the head with that if I say no?"  
   
"Possibly, but still highly unlikely.” Erik is pulling the metal apart, stretching it and curving it back onto itself so that it’s more of an exercise than actual sculpting. “It'd be a waste of good metal."   
   
“You’re just a regular comedian, aren’t you?”  
   
“ _Danke schön_ , I’ll be here all day.”   
   
In the distance, the Erik in this memory has finally finished his collections and has seated himself on the ground instead, surrounded by everything he could find. Piece after piece rises shakily into the air for his inspection and it's nothing like the smooth control that Erik has now, this Erik without the advantage of having had so many years to grow into his powers.   
   
“It’s a legitimate question, though,” Erik says at length. His younger self is experimenting with trying to flatten out a piece of aluminium, Charles watching the trial and error with his chin in one hand. Charles glances at Erik. “You haven’t told me whether you’ll be there when I wake up.”  
   
The thing is, if there’s any kindness, any sort of humanity left inside of him, Charles doesn’t expect Erik to wake up. Doesn’t want him to, because oh god, if Erik wakes, when Intelligence finds out that he’s been filtering everything he knows down to only the most inconsequential of facts–  
   
Erik stakes the twist of metal he had been playing with back down into the ground, remade and remoulded into a modern art piece of sorts that spears skywards. From where Charles sits, it almost looks as if it’s reaching out for something.  
   
"I'll be there," Charles lies, and it sounds unconvincing even to his own ears.  
 

* * *

  
Charles has been careful with what he feeds Emma, but even then, there’s only so much useless information he can dredge up before Emma wants something more substantial.  
   
"Clean, all clean," Emma is saying with thinly veiled disgust as she slides the list back towards Charles, who can only privately sigh in relief. The number of Erik's acquaintances that Charles could confidently hand over to Emma while trusting that they'd come to no harm had been few and far in between, mostly childhood friends or university coursemates, distant family members that Erik hadn't seen in years.   
   
"The locations, at least?" he tries.  
   
"Sold to new owners or abandoned."  
   
This is hardly news to Charles since he'd curated the list himself, but he feigns surprise all the same, taking a preciously small amount of pleasure in Emma's irritation. Across the table, Emma is regarding him with a look of pure disdain.  
   
"You're going to have to show me something more than this, Charles," she says after a beat. “You’ve been in there with Lehnsherr for what, almost four weeks now?”  
   
Charles nods. Three days to a month, actually, but it’s not like he’s been counting.   
   
“In that case, I’m sure you’re aware that means it’s been four times the goddamned amount you usually take with someone.”  
   
"Has it perhaps occurred to you that it’s taking four times as long because Lehnsherr is four times as hard to deal with?” Charles crosses his his arms at his chest, leaning back into his chair. “But by all means, Frost, if you think you can do this any better and faster than I can, please. Be my guest. Let me know, though, if you can even find Lehnsherr in that mind of his to begin with.  
   
The look that Emma gives Charles is an ugly one, a bad combination of frustration and barely checked anger.  
   
"If Intelligence wasn't so squeamish about clean-ups, don't think for one second that I wouldn't," she snaps. “You’ve gone soft, Charles.”  
   
“Have I ever pretended to be anything else?”  
   
The disapproval that Emma radiates is strong enough for even Charles to pick up on, almost one week from his last dose and head aching from it.  
   
"You know what?" she finally says. “Lets put it this way, sugar. If you can’t give me anything better than this by this time next week, I’m going to management and telling them to pull the plug on Lehnsherr.”  
   
“And you intend to do what with Lehnsherr, then? Try the usual methods?” Charles keeps his tone distant, even though his blood is running cold. Of course, some part of Charles had always known it would come to this, no other way to go beyond here, but...not this soon. Not now. “You sent him down to me because the usual methods didn’t work, Frost. What part of that last sentence do you fail to comprehend?”  
   
“What we do with Lehnsherr after this is none of your concern,  _Xavier_.” Emma rises from her seat, a clear indication that their check-in has come to an end.  
   
“If you can’t figure something out by next week, then management will, and you won’t have to worry your little head about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have your disaster of an operations report to file.” Emma’s mind is purposefully freezing when she brushes past Charles, the frostbite of it lingering like a chill in Charles’ bones. “Think very carefully about what you’re going to do with Lehnsherr this week, Xavier, because this is the last week you’re getting with him.”  
 

* * *

  
Erik seems to know that something is wrong, the moment that Charles steps into his head.   
   
“Rough few days?” he asks sympathetically. Charles runs a hand through his hair, sighing as he does.   
   
“Rough life, more like.”  
   
In the time that Charles had been gone, Erik has made inroads into getting his memories into some approximation of order and there are distinctly separated stacks now, some sort of unwritten system to the way Erik is working.  
   
“Need to talk about it?”   
   
“Not at the moment, no.”   
   
Erik sets down the stack that he had been carrying all the same, and it’s wordlessly that Charles shifts to make space for Erik next to him on the floor, leaning a little into Erik’s side when the other man sits. If they’re both already damned, Charles sees no reason to hold back anymore.  
   
 _Penny for your thoughts, at least?_  
   
Erik comes in uninvited these days, and Charles doesn’t stop him. Doesn’t want to, anyways.  
   
 _Only a penny?_ he asks, only the barest trace of humour.  
   
 _Depends on what kind of thoughts they are._  
   
Eyes closed, Charles can nonetheless feel Erik’s hand resting on his knee, thumb rubbing absent circles into his skin. He wants to remember this. Remember the weight of Erik’s warmth pressed against him, the shape of Erik’s thoughts entangled in his. What if feels like to be with another person, just because he wants to.  
   
 _We don’t have to, today, if you’re not up to it_ , Erik murmurs, quiet, when Charles takes longer than usual to reply.  _Go home, Charles. Take a break._  
   
“No, it’s fine.” If it comes out a little more hollow than Charles had intended, at least Erik doesn’t notice.  “We should, and I don’t want to go home, anyways. The faster we do this, the better it is for you, anyways. Just one or two more memories and I think we should be good to go.”  
   
“You’ve already gotten what you need?”  
   
Not at all, but Charles nods all the same.   
   
“Enough to go on, but a few more won’t hurt.”   
   
Charles feels his next sentence like an anchor dropped into the pit of his chest before he can even say it, but oh god, one week. One week to make sure that he has enough on the Brotherhood so that he can at least spare Erik the horror of waking up. One week.   
   
He has to do this.   
   
He  _can_  do this.   
   
“It’d be good if you could choose a more recent memory this time, if only to keep a balance with the old ones we already have,” Charles says with a lightness he cannot feel and Erik’s hand comes to a stop, Charles left waiting in a heavy silence that just goes on and on.  
   
Erik does break it though, in time.  
   
“I thought I’d show you in person when I woke up,–” he says carefully, “–but I guess that you knowing a few days early won’t make a difference.  
   
“Show me in...person?”  
   
Erik pulls away from Charles then, a small enough space between them so he can look Charles full in the eye. There’s an intensity in his eyes, a sharpness that Charles knows he has begun to take for granted  
   
“I’m going to ask you just one very simple question and I want you to answer as truthfully as possible, okay?”   
   
Charles nods, wordless, and Erik’s own agitation has already helped to push Charles’ heart up into his throat. He doesn’t think he could speak right now, even if he wanted to.  
   
The breath that Erik draws is a steadying one.  
   
“Tell me, Charles,” he says. “What do you know about the Brotherhood?”  
 

* * *

  
Hysterical laughter is threatening to spill out of Charles, his shoulders nearly shaking from the effort to keep it in. Of course it would be now, that Erik wants to tell him this. Of course. When else could it have been?  
   
“The Brotherhood?” Charles echoes instead, in the steadiest voice he can manage. “What is this, a recruitment session?”  
   
“It could be, if you’re so inclined.” Erik shrugs, and here is a shadow of the guarded man that Charles had met all those weeks ago, a persona that Erik has slipped on again as easy as changing masks. His hand has slipped from Charles’ knee and Charles misses it like he would his own limb, the two of them barely touching now.   
   
“I just want to know where you stand on this, Charles. Nothing more.”  
   
Except that it could be more. So, so much more than Erik could ever imagine it to be, this being the one difference between him merely never waking up again and Intelligence forcibly pulling him out into a real life nightmare.   
   
Charles has seen what Intelligence can do, if they want something bad enough. Knows, almost too intimately, the kinds of methods they’re prepared to use. Topside, Erik’s cuts and bruises have only begun to heal. They hadn’t even been  _trying_.   
   
“I don’t know, really,” Charles can hear himself say, the words sounding like they’re being spoken by someone else. “Ambivalent is probably the best description for the moment, though I suppose you’re looking to change that.”  
   
“You approve of their actions, then?”  
   
“I don’t condone some of the methods they’ve used, but that doesn’t mean I’m condemning the entire movement.” An assessing look here, from Erik, who nonetheless bites his tongue for now. “I think they have good intentions, but it’s just...the execution of them, mostly. What happened in Washington, in Seattle.”   
   
“If I recall, we were shot upon first, in Seattle.”  
   
Charles shakes his head, disagreeing.   
   
“That’s only because of Washington, in the months before. There are better ways, Erik, for the Brotherhood to get what it wants. Less violent ways.”  
   
“Let me guess, you’re suggesting official channels? Lobby the congress again, perhaps?” Erik’s fingers are curled into his palms, tension clear in the whites of his knuckles. “If that had succeeded the first hundred times, then we wouldn’t have to do what we’re doing now, would we?”  
   
“Education, then. Change the mindsets, if you can’t change the laws.”  
   
“Too slow. You’ve been an educator yourself, you know how long it takes for tangible change to happen. The sound that Erik’s makes is a frustrated one and it’s clear that this is an argument that he has had countless times before. “What the Brotherhood wants is for all mutants, Charles. Not just the ones in the generations to come.”  
   
“What is it that you’re proposing, then? Force an acceptance to happen?”   
   
“If it has to come to that, yes.” He gestures at the both of them. “We pass for humans, Charles. Indistinguishable from them, and yet, even then, once they know, they look at you different. Treat you different. What more the ones who don’t pass?”  
   
“There are laws in place, anti-discrimination–”  
   
Erik scoffs.   
   
“Laws,” he echoes, the tone of it mocking. “What are the use of laws if there’s no enforcement of them, no punishment when they’re broken? Will it do any good to quote the Anti-Discrimination Act in the face of a mob trying to tear someone apart?” Erik pushes his sleeve up and running down the inside of his arm is long, thin scar, Charles scrambling to his feet at the sight of it.  
   
“When did this–”  
   
“Last year. Ceramic knife, that’s why I didn’t feel it coming.”   
   
He lets the sleeve fall back down, but not before Charles had seen the actual extent of the wound, fingers brushing worriedly over it though it’s been long-healed.  
   
“I got off easy,” Erik continues, softer than before. “The girl we were trying to get to, she wasn’t too lucky. Just six years old, can you believe it? Six years old, and they tied her to a fence so they could pry the scales off her hands.”  
   
“Is she…”  
   
“She’s fine.” The smile that Erik gives Charles is a bitter one, though. “Someone pulled some strings for us, got her fostered with a mutant family. Last I heard from them, she can use her right hand again, but they’re still not sure if she’ll ever regain any sensation in the left one.”  
   
He holds his own hand up then, tracing a jagged line across the back of it.  
   
“They’d already torn through the tendons when we got to her. Can you imagine, if we didn’t get the tip off? If after her hands, they’d started on the rest of her?”  
   
“Good god,” Charles whispers, horrified.  
   
“The public sees the worst sides of us, but bear in mind, those sides exist only because of incidents such as these. Education, laws, systems, all of these are well and good, and I’m not saying we don’t need to see change in them because we do, but…” Erik fists his hands by his sides, genuine anguish flashing across his face.   
   
"She’s not an isolated case. Just one of many, and not even the worst we've seen. Do you see now, why we need to do what we do? Why the Brotherhood works this way?"  
   
"The way the Brotherhood works is through fighting violence with violence, Erik." Charles can't help but feel something that feels like sadness well up inside of him, understanding now on a very superficial level what Intelligence might see when they look at Erik. "What you're going to end up doing is stop one cycle of hate by creating another one. Is that the sort of world you want to create?"  
   
Erik lifts his head at this, and the voice he answers with is cold enough for Charles to almost flinch at.  
   
"If it's a world where people like you and I can live without fear, then yes. I've been on both sides of it, Charles. Trust me when I say it's better to be feared than to fear."  
   
The silence on Charles' part weighs the air down, and the longer they spend in it, the more the fire goes out of Erik's eyes.   
   
 _I don't want to fight_ , he finally says, voice small in the confines of Charles' mind.  _But I wish you could see what I've seen. You might understand, then, why this is a point I can't concede_.  
   
Charles has never hated anyone as much as he's hated himself in this moment, but if this is the price he has to pay for the remains of Erik's life, Charles will pay it a hundred times over, a hundred lifetimes' worth. If Judas had the promise of twenty pieces of silver for his betrayal, Charles has the certainty of Erik's death on his own terms, if not at his own hands  
   
 _Make me see it then_. Charles can't count on the strength of his voice now, grief clawing at the insides of his throat and making it hard to speak. _You know what I can do. Make me understand._  
 

* * *

  
For this memory, Erik scarcely needs any help to build it from the ground up.  
   
“It’s recent,” is all the answer he gives after turning down Charles’ offer of help and sure enough, when the nothingness they stand in starts to collapse on itself, the walls that emerge to take it’s place are almost hyper-real, completely solid to touch. It’s like dreaming in high definition after a lifetime of muted edges and Charles doesn’t know if he can bring himself to like this mirroring of reality as much. Everything feels too close for comfort, too real to actually know for sure whether he’s awake or dreaming.  
   
“If at any time you need me to stop it, tell me and I will,” Eriks says quietly next to him and Charles doesn’t have time to ask why before the scene shifts, like pressing play on a video recently stopped.   
   
These are the first few things that Charles notices, when it begins:  
   
Erik himself, standing at the forefront of the party he leads, face gone pale from fear and anger.  
   
The two others behind him, a man and a woman that Charles knows he will have to commit to memory.  
   
A sobbing teenage mutant soaked to the bone and still dripping, water a bright sheen against the rust-red of his skin.  
   
An older man gripping the wrist of the teen in one hand and holding a lighted match in another.  
   
The distinct smell of kerosene hanging miasmic in the air, infusing every shouted word and–  
   
“No,” Charles hears himself say under his breath, horrified as the pieces slot into place and it’s by pure instinct that his hand seeks out Erik’s, squeezing it tight when he finds it. “Erik, don’t tell me this is–”  
   
“You wanted to understand, didn’t you?” Erik’s voice has gone flat, barely audible over the sound of the teenager screaming, a shrill, terrified sound that only abates when his father yells at him to stop. “You wanted to see, so I’m showing you.”  
   
The Erik in this memory has started to speak in a low voice, hands spread and held out in front of him as he does. “We’ll take him,” he’s saying, even as he takes one cautious step closer. “You don’t have to do this. We’ll take him if you don’t want him, and you’ll never have to see him again.”  
   
“Fucking muties,” the man spits and his grip on the boy tightens even further, a strangled sob bursting out from the latter as a result of it. “No son of mine is going with you freaks.”  
   
The match is burning down to a stub and Charles is sure he’s going to break the bones of Erik’s hand, from how hard he’s clutching at it.  
   
“Please, dad, I won’t go out anymore, I swear, I won’t–”  
   
“Shut  _up_.”  
   
“Sir please, if you’ll just–”  
   
“Should have just drowned you when we found out, I swear to god–”  
   
Everything seems to happen at once, then.   
   
The flick of the match and the screaming, the smell of burning flesh rising on the air.   
   
Erik’s own agonised shout and his hand reaching out for the boy, too late, too late, so he turns to the father instead, furious, except someone has gotten to him first. The woman, her hand wrapped around the father’s neck and lifting him clean off the floor, squeezing tighter, skin falling away to reveal sapphire scales and sunglow yellow eyes so he will see that it’s a fucking mutie who’ll choke the life out of him–  
   
“No,” Charles whispers, and Erik cuts the memory there.   
  


* * *

  
If asked about it, Charles knows he won’t be able to explain how he got home. How he somehow managed to foist off some kind of excuse to Erik and do the same to Hank, all without screaming.   
   
Emma, at least, he knows he circumvents only because she doesn’t want to see the likes of him before Monday of next week, but beyond that, from walking out of the compound to mechanically hailing a cab to take him home because his hands are shaking too much to guide him on the trains, Charles doesn’t know how he does it.  
   
All he knows, however, is this:  
   
Whatever happens after this and no matter what choice he makes, Intelligence can never,  _ever_  be allowed to go after the Brotherhood.  
 

* * *

  
(He had written her countless letters, those first two or three years. Pages upon pages over the weeks and months, mailed pleas and apologies to that damned post-office box with a regularity almost like clockwork.  
   
Dear Raven, please just let me know you’re safe.  
   
Dear Raven, I saw this in a shop window and thought of you.  
   
Dear Raven, will you ever find it in yourself to forgive me?  
   
Gifts come back unopened. Letters return to him the same way, though for one pitiful month, Charles had clung on to the desperate hope that one of his missives had actually been read and kept, no sight of it in his mailbox until it had limped back to him soaked through and bleeding ink through it’s envelope after being lost in the Christmas rush.  
   
Dear Raven, I miss you.  
   
Dear Raven, are you ever coming home?  
   
Dear Raven, you are loved, you are always, always loved.  
   
It’s been a slow, painful process, but Charles knows by now, how exhausting it is to keep clinging on to hope like this. Tiring, discouraging work, to sort through his mail and feel that dull stab of disappointment each and every time.  
   
So Charles doesn’t write as much anymore. A letter every other month, maybe, or the occasional card for the holidays that she likes.  
   
 _It’s enough_ , he tells himself each and every time.  _This will have to be enough_.)  
 

* * *

   
Two options:  
   
Withhold the information that he already has and watch Intelligence take Erik away from him, all while knowing that Raven is safe for the time being  
   
Or  
   
Let Intelligence have what they want about the Brotherhood and allow Erik to die with dignity, though Charles will have to live with the fear that it might be Raven’s mind laid out for his abuse some day.  
   
It’s a dilemma that leaves Charles paralysed for what feels like days, frozen by the choices set before him. How to measure the price of living against the cost of death? How to determine the weight of one love over another?  
   
Charles counts the hours on trembling fingers and keeps coming up short.   
   
No time. No plausible answer. Mind run ragged from the replay of every option, until Charles can’t tell one choice from the next, one path from another.  
   
What now?   
   
Where to?  
   
How else?  
  


* * *

   
Unless.  
 

* * *

  
Maybe.  
 

* * *

  
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  
   
(Then you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.)  
 

* * *

  
“Charles?”  
   
His hands are shaking. He knows this. Can practically feel the rush of adrenaline still thrumming through his veins, heart beating like a bird inside of his chest.  
   
“Charles is everything–”  
   
“No time,” Charles says, strained, and Erik is pliant when Charles pulls him to the ground. “We don’t have time, topside.”  
   
They’re kneeling because Charles knows he won’t be able to stand after this, nevermind the fact that he’s already wavering as he is now. This is his second day without food or sleep, and judging by the alarm on Erik’s face, it’s definitely starting to show.  
   
“Charles what are you–”  
   
“Do you trust me?” he cuts in and Erik is confused, the question catching him off guard for a moment before he nods.   
   
“I do. You know I do, but–”  
   
Words are too slow, too cumbersome. Charles’ tongue feels like lead in his mouth and if he speaks, he’ll surely end up stumbling over the syllables.   
   
 _I’m going to show you something, Erik_  he says and there’s no time to build, Charles having to make do with the the faintest of impressions pressed straight into Erik’s mind.  _And whatever you see after this, whatever you it is that you hear, I need you to just remember one thing: Not everything was a lie. Not everything, I swear_.  
   
 _No, wait, Charles what–_  
   
But Charles is already reaching out to blindly clutch at Erik’s arms, fingers digging into flesh for purchase because Charles is so much weaker than he thought he’d be, and if he could just touch Erik, it feels like it’ll be easier. The fact that this might be the last time that Erik will let Charles anywhere near him is a thought that makes Charles want to sob.  
   
 _I love you_ , Charles thinks desperately at him.  _If you can only believe one thing from me after all of it, let it be this. I love you. I love you._  
   
Erik’s mind is in a disarray,  **confusion-incomprehension-god, I love you too**  echoed like a haunting across the spaces in between, but then Charles is starting to push the first of his own memories at Erik, and it gets drowned out in the flood.   
 

* * *

  
_Emma, speaking to him for the first time, and he remembers sending her away not long after, sickened by the idea of what she calls extractive interrogation._  
   
 _Then, walking home on a bleak November night. Feeling her mind before he sees her, a cage of ice he knows he should be able to break free from, but he’s panicking, too many hands holding him down, and he’s–_  
   
 _Waking up to a world gone quiet and gripped by a terror unlike anything he’s ever known, screaming himself hoarse until they put him to sleep again and the silence isn’t so noticeable then, but–_  
   
 _They wake him again and it’s a repeat, repeat, repeat, a constant reminder of what they can do, what they’ve done, and in the end, it’s–_  
   
 _Only a temporary relief, one dose that might last a week or maybe even two, but there’s no way of knowing if the syringes they give him hold cause or cure and he can’t afford to guess, so–_  
   
 _It’s service for sometimes-salvation and actions to fuel an ongoing addiction, and it’s ingenious really, the way they have him collared, a nice little asset that–_  
   
 _Falls apart after the first time, terrified and shaking, sick with the knowledge that he had killed a man and the second goes no better, not even the third or fourth or fifteenth–_  
   
 _Variation on this theme of death and savagery, emptying him out until he can barely live with himself anymore and a dead telepath will be no use at all, so–_  
   
 _Something has to change, persuasion becoming preferable to punishment and mutilations switched for manipulations, all the better for his bleeding–_  
   
 _Heart, which doesn’t know want from need anymore, but he does know that Erik’s mind is the most beautiful thing that he’s ever been told to destroy and Charles can’t do it, he won’t–_  
   
 _Know how to live with himself after this because he can’t save them both, can’t make a choice, please don’t make him choose one love over another, one person–_  
   
 _Can’t do anything but Erik, Erik listen to me, please, I know a way to get you out of here, even if you never forgive me for all of this, let me save you, let me–_  
 

_I trust you._  
 

* * *

  
Cobbled together from the accounts of Dr. Hank McCoy and based on what that can be salvaged from the CCTVs, the official narrative of Erik Lehnsherr’s escape goes a little something like this:  
   
 **0903** Lehnsherr wakes seemingly on his own accord.  
   
 **0904**     Lehnsherr attacks Drs. McCoy and Xavier, incapacitating both before turning his powers on surveillance equipment in the lab.   
   
 **0907**     A further four staff members are injured by Lehnsherr in his attempt to navigate out of the facility. Lockdown is initiated at 0913, but ultimately fails, as Lehnsherr’s powers prevent complete shutdown proceedings  
   
 **0922** Lehnsherr leaves the compound  
   
A non-official narrative, however, goes more like this:  
   
 **0845**     Dr. McCoy injects Lehnsherr with what appears to be the usual dosage of sedatives required for stable dreaming. In truth, 80% of the portion is saline solution.  
   
 **0903** Dr. Xavier takes control of Lehnsherr’s body, allowing for the illusion of Lehnsherr acting alone.   
   
 **0904** Pre-agreed superficial injuries are sustained by Drs. McCoy and Xavier. Under Dr. Xavier’s guidance, Lehnsherr then proceeds to destroy all available surveillance equipment in the lab.  
   
 **0907** Lehnsherr is directed by Dr. Xavier through the facility. The four staff members who are encountered sustain non-life threatening injuries.  
   
 **0913**     Lockdown is initiated. Dr. Xavier orients Lehnsherr towards the electricity switchboard on the ground floor to redirect the procedure.  
   
 **0914** Lockdown fails  
   
 **0922**     Dr. Xavier relinquishes all control of Lehnsherr’s body. Using his powers, Lehnsherr appropriates a car from employee parking and leaves the compound.   
 

* * *

  
There’s only a few seconds that they can afford when the switch happens, Charles sharing the same dreamscape with Erik for what he knows will be the last time.   
   
“Go,” Charles is gasping even as he collapses to the floor and he’s pushing Erik weakly away, back towards the direction that Erik should be leaving in. “You need to go, there’s no time.”  
   
“We’ll find you.” There’s a frantic note to Erik’s voice and Charles can feel his control slipping little by little, Erik needing to leave  _now_  if he ever wants to get out of here. “We’ll find you and get you out of this, I swear, after all of this is over.”  
   
Charles loosens his grip just a fraction more and he can feel Erik’s presence being pulled further away, called back towards where Charles is still barely holding on to Erik’s body. There’s no time, no time left at all, and Charles doesn’t know if he even has the ability to do this when he’s stretched so thin, but oh god, he needs to, he needs the security that it will bring.   
   
Erik can’t come back.  
   
“Charles?”  
   
The book he’d been hurriedly building is a small one, messily made, but it’s an attempt that’s as good as any and this will just have to do, Charles finishing with the last page just as understanding dawns on Erik’s face.  
   
“What are you–”  
   
“I’m sorry,” Charles says, near-fevered in his fatigue. All of Erik’s memories of him have been pulled into the pages and he’s cradling the book in his hands like the precious thing that it is. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”  
   
“No, wait–”  
   
Charles is glad that he’s already doubled over from the exhaustion, because the grief that’s welling in his chest would have sent him to his knees otherwise.   
   
“Charles–”  
   
All he needs now is an open flame and the will to throw it in.   
   
“Charles please, don’t–”  
   
There.  
   
One out of two and blazing now, hot enough to burn.   
   
“I’m so sorry,” Charles whispers as he lets go and the last thing he sees before he wakes up in his own body is pages, curling into ash from the heat.


	6. Epilogue

Life goes on, Charles throwing himself into the semblance of normalcy that he can sometimes afford. Hank doesn’t have the time to look more into it, but Charles is sure there’s some sort of physical compensation happening whenever the serum starts to wear off and the cotton clouding his mind starts turning to stone instead, voices muffling until Charles could cry from the effort it takes to hear thoughts beyond his own.   
   
It’s just the evening after his last dose though and Max’s exact thoughts on the value of y isn’t that hard to pick out from the low hum of the other library patrons, Charles having to bite back an involuntary smile when he hears it.  
   
“Did you manage to finish the worksheets from last week?” he asks instead.  
  
Max looks equal parts sheepish and guilty even as he hands the worksheet in question over, Charles noting how the attempts at linear equations had tapered off near the start of the second column. It’s been long, mostly painful climb down, from having been eying a position on Columbia’s permanent teaching staff to tutoring 8th grade subjects in the nooks of public libraries after school hours, but at least there’s a calmness to be had in tutoring. Surrounded by math worksheets and biology textbooks, it’s almost a comfort to have to deal with trains of thought that only worry about undone homework.  
   
“You know what,” Charles tries when Max looks blankly at the third unanswered question in a row. “How about you get your graph paper out so we can walk through the next one and then we’ll take things from there, alright?”  
  
A muted sentiment of agreement radiates from Max and Charles leans over the fresh sheet of graph paper, taking the proffered pen from between Max’s webbed fingers.  
   
If this is life now, Charles will just live with what he can get.  
 

* * *

  
Charles is with his last student of the day when he feels it. Like a spark of static along his skin, a beacon flared out in the dark.  
  
“Mr. Xavier?”  
  
Jamie is fourteen and has the propensity for forgetting to round her numbers up to the second decimal, forked tongue poking out the side of her mouth and slit pupils narrowing whenever Charles reminds her. Confusion, tinged with a heavy dose of curiosity, is roiling off her in waves, and she has her head cocked to one side when Charles manages to find his voice again.  
  
“It’s nothing, sorry,” he says, a little hollow but still relatively under control. “Mind just went wandering off on its own for a little while.” And it’s still wandering even now, flitting into the heads of those closest to that mind, trying to get a glimpse of the man himself. The back of his jacket. The vague sense of apprehension from someone who doesn’t like the firm set of this stranger’s jaw, or the haunted look his eyes.  
  
“That’s okay,” comes the bright reply that Charles barely registers. “I do that sometimes too.”  
  
He’s hovering outside the library steps, as if unsure about whether he wants to go in. Minor sparks of annoyance are flaring up around his immediate vicinity as other patrons have to walk around him to get in, and it’s with a churning in his gut that Charles starts to feel him gravitating closer to the entrance, more and determined with every step.  
  
“You know what, Jamie?” Charles says hurriedly when he finally does set foot into the entrance area. “What about we end a little earlier today and make up for the last ten minutes next week?”  
  
If Jamie has any opinion on that suggestion, Charles doesn’t hear it over the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, only vaguely aware of Jamie cheerfully packing her things up and waving her goodbyes at him as he drifts closer still.  
  
Now, in the wake of her absence, it’s hard for Charles to remember if he’s awake or if this is just another one of his nightmares, another dream broken into. He doesn’t dream as much anymore, but it’s not like it’s something that he misses. God knows he’s woken up enough times with the ghost of Erik’s mind pressed against his, painful and hurting like phantom limbs do.  
  
If this was a dream, this would be the part where Charles would seek Erik out. Get out of his seat and follow the siren call of Erik’s mind down the corridors, only to find a shut door, locked and barred.  
  
This is not a dream, though.  
  
This is Charles rooted to his table, unable to move when Erik walks into the room and steals all the oxygen in it. This is Charles, hands clenched and knuckles bone white, when Erik moves towards him, face already set in grim determination.  
  
This is–  
  
“Charles,” Erik says when he comes to a stop in front of Charles’ desk. There’s still graph paper scattered across it, pens and a forlorn calculator peeking out from between the pages of a math textbook that has seen better days. “Dr. Charles Xavier, right? They told me I’d be able to find you here.”  
  
“Is there something I can help you with?” Charles forces out with a thin veneer of calm. “Mister...”  
  
“Lehnsherr.” The chair scrapes noisily against the floor when Erik drags it out, the creak of wood when he sits in it sounding to Charles as if it’s coming from a great distance away.  
  
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” Charles says slowly and there’s a haunted look in Erik’s eyes that Charles knows he put there, though Erik himself might not know it just yet. It’s all that Charles can do to not buckle under its weight. “I’m afraid I don’t–  
  
“This is going to sound like the strangest thing, but...” Across the table, Erik has leaned forward in that quiet, intense desperation of his, Charles on the brink of meeting him halfway.   
   
“Why do I feel like I know you?”  
   
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3 
> 
> (Also, I really feel compelled to apologise for the incredibly sloppy ending :( The original plan for this was to have it twice as long and three times less bad, but since I have such terrible time management, a lot of last minute hacking had to take place. Hopefully the start of the fic was enjoyable, at least! )


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